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E. 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






THE 

MARRIAGE VERDICT 

A NOVEL 


V 


BY 

FRANK H. ^PEARMAN 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

1923 





Copyright, 1923, by 


J 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 


Published March, 1923 



MAR 26 ’23 ; 



©C1A69S768 ^ 

-"VU0\ z 





TO 

MY WIFE 

EUGENIE LONERGAN SPEARMAN 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Spring of 1916. 3 

II. The Evening at Harrison’s.18 

III. Durand and Company.32 

IV. Janeway Visits Eagles Nest .... 43 

V. Louise Encounters Janeway.56 

VI. The Bishop’s Story.66 

VII. Enter Maymie.80 

VIII. Three Years After.93 

IX. The Quarrel .no 

X. Face to Face.128 

XI. Louise Gathers Cattails .137 

XII. Janeway Speaks.152 

XIII. Judge Harrison Suspects.159 

XIV. Gertrude Astonished.166 

XV. Louise Speaks .178 

XVI. At the Bazaar .197 

• • 

Vll 













viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII. Janeway Interviews the Bishop . . . 208 

XVIII. Day-Dreams.219 

XIX. The Ordeal Looms.237 

XX. Disquieting News.255 

XXI. Can I Win Again?.270 

XXII. Louise Awaits Durand.284 

XXIII. The Interpellation. 293 

XXIV. The Lips Are the Lips of the Bishop, 

but the Voice Is the Voice of St. Paul 302 

XXV. In the Last Hour.313 








THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 





























THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


CHAPTER I 
THE SPRING OF 1916 

“No, Mrs. Simms,” interposed Mrs. Harrison, in 
the low, surprised, and distinct manner of speaking 
which she quite understood how to make irritating. 
“You are entirely wrong. Henry Janeway is under, 
not over forty—and well under! ” 

Mrs. Simms tossed her head. 

“He can’t be very much under,” she persisted, 
unabashed, and temperamentally pugnacious. She 
was ready to say more—had it, in fact, on the tip 
of her tongue—but Mrs. Harrison, whose position in 
the Durand circle, together with her gray hair and 
equally positive disposition, demanded precedence, 
had no scruples about cutting her off. It was done, 
of course, in a courteous but in a cruelly effective 
manner. 

“Henry,” observed Mrs. Harrison, continuing 
with dignity to address the three younger women 
with whom she was drinking tea at Mrs. Robert 
Durand’s, in Fond du Lac, “is exactly thirty-five 
years old—for all his great reputation.” The last 

3 



4 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


words were barbed for Mrs. Simms. Jacob Simms, 
her husband, and Henry Janeway were rival law¬ 
yers, both widely and favorably known in and about 
Chicago and Fond du Lac. “He was born/’ ex¬ 
plained Mrs. Harrison, who usually referred to her 
husband as the Judge, “in Fond du Lac, the win¬ 
ter of the big snow, 1881. I remember distinctly, 
because his father gave Judge Harrison a dog that 
winter, and the dog ate up all of the Judge’s under¬ 
wear.” Young Mrs. Robert Durand, Gertrude 
Durand, and Mrs. Simms exclaimed in a chorus. 

“He was a ferocious animal,” Mrs. Harrison went 
on evenly. “The dog’s mother ate all her puppies 
in that litter except this particular one; I was nat¬ 
urally sorry that he escaped. He would plunge into 
the snow and tear the Judge’s underwear off the 
clothes-line with the utmost fury, week after week— 
he seemed to hate red—and the poor laundress 
couldn’t chase him through the drifts. So when the 
snow and ice went off in the spring, we found red 
scraps and remnants scattered all the way down the 
hill; my husband really dates his sciatica from that 
awful winter.” 

“But,” demanded young Louise Durand—Rob¬ 
ert’s wife—with a bubbling laugh, “why didn’t you 
get rid of the horrid creature?” 

“My dear!” Mrs. Harrison’s face set in amiable 
surprise. “Evidently you are not familiar with the 
etiquette governing the presentation of puppies. I 
couldn’t. Mr. Janeway’s father and the Judge were 
great friends. Happily the brute was accidentally 



THE SPRING OF 1916 


5 

shot by an exasperated neighbor, while making off 
with a boiled ham that had been set outside the 
kitchen door to cool. So I know,” asserted Mrs. 
Harrison, quite calmly confident, “that Mr. Jane¬ 
way is exactly thirty-five. No, dear,” she added, in 
a motherly way, to Louise, “no more tea.” 

Mrs. Simms saw the hopelessness of contending 
with so experienced a swordswoman. “I wonder,” 
she ventured to purr, in retreat, “whether his father’s 
fondness for savage brutes could be responsible for 
Mr. Janeway’s being so pugnacious.” 

Mrs. Harrison only followed up her victory. 

“Oh, my dear,” she objected, “don’t imagine that 
Henry’s father loved bloodthirsty dogs; he was quite 
an academic person; the bulldog was merely an inci¬ 
dent. Judge Harrison and Mr. Janeway one eve¬ 
ning fell disputing the authorship of a verse in praise 
of bulldogs. It proved to be, as Henry’s father had 
asserted, one of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s—and to 
assuage my husband’s humiliation at having ascribed 
it to some one else, Mr. Janeway very handsomely 
presented us with this rare bull puppy. But he 
loved and had all sorts of dogs. He once gave me 
the dearest little Skye terrier.” 

“Well, is it true,” asked Louise Durand of Mrs. 
Harrison, “that Mr. Janeway always wears a long 
linen duster when he’s trying a case before a farmer 
jury? 

“He wasn’t wearing one yesterday,” replied Mrs. 
Harrison, unperturbed. “I drove to court with 
Judge Harrison in the afternoon. He said he 


6 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


thought I ought to hear Henry’s closing; and I 
thought Mr. Janeway the best-dressed man in the 
room.” 

“He must be very odd, to have so many stories 
told about him,” said Louise, to make talk. “ Where 
does he live?” 

“Until his mother died two years ago, he kept a 
home for her here in Prospect Street. In Chicago 
he lives at the Chicago Club. He has always kept 
his membership here in the Country Club, of course. 
And after his mother’s death he fitted up one of 
those new apartments in Court House Square.” 

“And a bachelor,” mused Louise—not as one in¬ 
terested, but as if lacking a new topic for comment. 

“I’ve heard,” interposed Gertrude Durand, Rob¬ 
ert’s unmarried sister, a pleasing young woman, most 
intense and energetic in manner, “that he had a 
love-affair when he was young. The story was he 
was engaged to a young girl. She had incipient 
consumption. He did everything he could to save 
her, but she died, and he never married.” 

“He must be queer,” Mrs. Durand remarked, as 
if wanting to dismiss the subject. 

But Mrs. Harrison firmly shrugged her shoulders. 
“Who told you that story, Gertrude?” she asked. 

“Jim Kennedy.” Kennedy was understood to 
aspire to Gertrude’s hand, and Mrs. Harrison took 
measure accordingly. 

“I am sure Jim is a reliable authority on most 
topics,” she observed prudently, “but I can’t vouch 
for that story. And I knew Henry all the time he 



THE SPRING OF 1916 


7 

lived with his mother in their old home.” The tele¬ 
phone bell rang. “ I wonder, my dears,” asked Mrs. 
Harrison, listening, “whether that can be a verdict?” 

It proved to be, as the maid presently announced, 
only a message from Mrs. Harrison’s husband, say¬ 
ing that he was driving up to take her home. 

But, in matter of fact, newsboys were crying the 
evening extras, with the verdict in the dynamiting 
case, just as Judge Harrison’s car turned from his 
office into College Avenue. Without stopping for 
the newspapers, he directed the chauffeur to drive 
to the home of Robert Durand. 

The day had been raw and the wind still blew off 
the lake, where great piles of anchor-ice, loosened 
and driven in by a dying gale, lay in fantastic heaps, 
as far as the eye could reach, along the frosted beach. 

The home of the Durands—a young and childless 
couple of the very prosperous class—stood well back 
from the Shell Bay Road, on the bluff skirting the 
lake north of the town. The house, white and of a 
symmetrical design, with a Florentine facade, had 
been built to the fancy and under the direction of 
the wife, Louise Durand, when she had come to 
Fond du Lac four years earlier, a bride. As a de¬ 
parture from the Colonial, the English, and the non¬ 
descript types of better homes along the road, the 
Robert Durand home was distinctive. The few who 
refused to like it laid its singularity to the California 
rearing, and what they termed the California tem¬ 
perament, of Louise Durand, its mistress, only now 
reaching twenty-three years of age. 


8 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


When Harrison walked into the Durand living- 
room, his wife, the gray-haired matron who had been 
so positive about Henry Janeway’s age, was chat¬ 
ting, on a davenport, with Louise. And Mrs. Simms 
—a vivacious brunette—her husband, the general 
attorney of the Durand Companies, was recounting 
an incident, in her lively manner, to Gertrude 
Durand, Robert’s sister. 

Judge Sidney Harrison—so titled because early in 
life he had occupied a seat on the circuit bench— 
made his entry with an accustomed deliberation of 
step. He was above average height, rather tall, in¬ 
deed; spare in figure and with a slight, curious stoop 
just at the top of the shoulders; this threw his head 
a little forward. He still retained from life’s un¬ 
equal battle a little shock of hair, running front and 
back, very like a cockscomb; but for the most part 
he was conspicuously bald. His face, marked by 
keen and somewhat deep-set eyes, was not large. 
His features were only vaguely dried and wrinkled, 
and his complexion being of a tolerable hue, con¬ 
tributed to an agreeable expression—one strength¬ 
ened by a quiet voice and an easy manner of speak¬ 
ing. 

The women, with the exception of Mrs. Harrison, 
sprang up the moment they saw him. 

“ The news! The news ! ” cried Gertrude Durand. 
“What’s the news? Now, Uncle Sid, don’t be ex¬ 
asperating —what is the news?” 

He regarded his questioners quizzically. “Am I 
as bad as that? Well, I have news—news of great 




THE SPRING OF 1916 


9 

pith and moment. The verdict is in, and the men 
that blew us up are convicted and will be sentenced 
shortly.” 

Under the shower of congratulations, Judge Harri¬ 
son settled himself in an easy chair. Louise took 
one close to him, and Harrison recounted the crowded 
court-room details. As he began, he drew from a 
waistcoat pocket his almost invariable and affection¬ 
ate companion, a long and slender cigar which he 
did not venture to light—hardly bulkier than a lead- 
pencil—which, whether lighted or unlighted, was 
oftener in his fingers than between his lips. If he 
smoked, he smoked contemplatively, and his entire 
manner was at one with this trait; normally he was 
poised, drily laconic, and reservedly confident. As 
he spoke now rather directly to Louise, her youthful 
freshness stimulated him, and he drew from her alive 
and inquiring eyes the energy he needed to answer 
her eager questions in his most agreeable manner— 
this both to please Louise and to maintain an elderly 
masculine credit with an attractive young woman. 

“Of course, I remember the first dynamiting at 
the North Mill,” said Louise, answering him in turn, 
as he went into the history of the case. She was 
sitting attentively forward and looking at the legal 
head of the family circle as he liked to be looked at, 
with an interest sincere enough to seem deep. “I’m 
not likely to forget that,” she added, with a little 
moue. “It happened just after Robert and I left for 
England last year to get the contracts.” 

“Two of the men were caught in San Francisco 



io THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

soon after you left,” Harrison went on, “and two in 
Chicago. One we haven’t got yet. It took a long 
time to bring them to trial. Then we had a hung 
jury”—Harrison made a wry face, expressive of the 
legal difficulties endured. Finally,” he went on, 
with returning satisfaction, “we got Janeway into 
the thing. 

“Our prosecuting attorney was ill—is yet, in fact 
—unfortunately, poor fellow, for him, fortunately for 
us. The Governor took my view that for this par¬ 
ticular job Janeway was good material, and ap¬ 
pointed him as temporary prosecutor.” Judge Har¬ 
rison coughed delicately to deprecate a possible im¬ 
pression that any influence of his had contributed 
more than the merest suggestion to the arrange¬ 
ment. 

“And to-day,” he continued calmly, “after the 
longest trial ever staged in Fond du Lac County, 
the jury returned a verdict convicting all four de¬ 
fendants. It was a fight. Any lawyer,” remarked 
Harrison reflectively, “that goes before a Fond du 
Lac jury nowadays with the name of ‘Durand’ 
tagged to his case could be persuaded without much 
difficulty to trade it off for a millstone to be hanged 
about his neck.” 

Louise listened, and a far-off expression revealed 
itself for a moment in her eyes. Then she smiled. 
“I’m sorry we’re so unpopular.” 

“It’s all Bob’s fault,” burst out Gertrude Durand. 
“Father used to get along with the men.” 

Harrison sat unruffled. “Your father had differ- 


THE SPRING OF 1916 


ii 


ent men to get along with,” he said. “Though Bob, 
it’s true, is unlike his father in many respects. How¬ 
ever, he’s certainly a steel maker.” 

Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Simms put in question 
and comment on the gratifying conviction of the 
dynamiters—for no one, they said, had thought they 
could ever be convicted by a Fond du Lac jury—and 
Judge Harrison was in good mood to make answer 
and return comment. As general counsel for the 
steel companies under the principal ownership and 
entire management of Robert Durand, his nephew 
by marriage, he had, after a long and bitter struggle, 
started for the penitentiary the men who had ap¬ 
plied force as their last word in a long labor argu¬ 
ment, and blown up a portion of the Durand Fond 
du Lac plant. 

“And where did you get hold of Mr. Janeway?” 
asked Gertrude. 

“He’s a Fond du Lac boy; went to Chicago some 
years ago-” 

“A boy, Judge Harrison!” gushed Mrs. Simms, 
with snappy eyes. As wife of the general attorney 
of the Durand Companies, it was generally believed 
that her nose had been put slightly out of joint by 
the admission, so to speak, of Janeway into the 
Durand official family. “Why, we’ve just been 
talking about his age—if you set him back much 
further, we shall have to put him in knee pants!” 

Judge Harrison pursued his thought on an even 
keel. He recollected that Simms had fought and 
lost more than one important case for the corpora- 




12 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


tion, and that Janeway’s success had created a some¬ 
what delicate situation. The Judge had, in fact, 
taken one case out of Simms’s hands after his failure 
to sway a jury; he never followed a loser. 

“I’ve known Janeway since he was a boy,” he 
explained placatingly. “He read for a while here 
in my office and practised here. When he decided 
to try his fortunes in Chicago, I gave him a letter to 
Levi Stearns, counsel for the Standard Oil Company. 
He was in, toward the end, on that thirty-million- 
dollar-fine case. Your husband”—Judge Harrison, 
looking at Mrs. Simms, impaled her rather remorse¬ 
lessly on the point of his remark—“told me the gos¬ 
sip was—and I happen to know it’s so—that a point 
raised by Janeway in the case secured the reversal. 
Of course, Janew r ay was just a kid, and Levi stole 
the credit. I’ve often thought what a blessing it is 
to mankind that Levi wasn’t camping at the foot of 
Mount Sinai the night Moses brought down the 
stone tablets. If that had happened Levi and not 
Moses would have been the prophet of the Ten 
Commandments. Janeway figured, too, in the dis¬ 
solution case. But I’ve known him so long, I al¬ 
ways think of him as a boy,” added the Judge, with 
leisurely satisfaction. 

“I’ve heard he’s Irish,” ventured Mrs. Simms. 

“He well might be,” returned Harrison, unmoved. 
“Greeks and Celts have exasperatingly subtle minds. 
But he isn’t. There are just a few plain Americans 
left, you know.” 

Mrs. Simms made her excuses and got away. Not 


THE SPRING OF 1916 


13 

until she had left did Judge Harrison show any irri¬ 
tability. 

“Was Mrs. Simms born here?” he asked of Ger¬ 
trude. 

“No, indeed,” said Gertrude, “she is not a native.” 

“She seems to know so many things about Jane¬ 
way that aren’t so,” complained the Judge. “She 
told somebody that Bob got Janeway into this case.” 

“Oh, Uncle Sidney,” exclaimed Louise, “it was I 
—she told me that-” 

“Well, Bob didn’t get him,” averred Harrison. 

“Mr. Simms?” 

“No, not Mr. Simms,” Harrison went on drily. 
“Janeway professes to feel under some obligation to 
me for the worthless advice I used to impose on him; 
and for the letters I gave him when he packed his 
bag for Chicago. So when we needed him, I thought 
I had a pull.” 

“Mr. Janeway’s a great reader,” observed Mrs. 
Harrison in a sage aside to Louise. 

“I can’t hand him much credit for that,” remarked 
Judge Harrison. “The fellow has a facility that 
way. He grabs the meat of a page at a glance. It’s 
very curious to see him open a law book; nine times 
out of ten it will be at the very heart of the sub¬ 
ject.” 

“But, Sid,” drawled Mrs. Harrison, “tell how you 
‘got acquainted’ with him, as you expressed it, after 
he began to practise here for himself.” 

Harrison demurred, but his wife persisted. 

“That was a railroad case,” said the elderly law- 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


14 

yer, at length. “We had to take a strip of land in 
town here that belonged to the Catholic Bishop. 
We condemned. I was attorney for the railroad, 
Janeway represented the Bishop. Janeway raised 
the point that the strip we wanted took a section 
corner from his client.” 

Louise listened, trying to appear interested. 
“What’s a section corner?” asked Gertrude. 

“It’s really nothing at all,” remarked the Judge. 
“A mere surveyor’s mark; a stone, or a stake, to 
designate areas of land divided into sections of six 
hundred and forty acres by the government. That’s 
the way all the newer portion of our country is sur¬ 
veyed; there must be several million section corners 
in the United States. 

“But Janeway mapped out that precious section 
corner, photographed it, exploited it, pleaded it, en¬ 
larged on the enormity of the idea of a corporation’s 
forcibly taking a strip of land that included a sec¬ 
tion corner belonging to a wholly innocent and pov¬ 
erty-stricken client—who comprised, by the way, all 
in himself another powerful corporation—till he had 
the jury almost in tears over that blamed section 
corner. I may say his jury, for before he finished 
he owned it. There was no more sense in his con¬ 
tention that we were irreparably injuring the Bishop 
by taking a section corner away from him,” com¬ 
plained Harrison patiently, “than there would have 
been if we had proposed to move a home-made 
mail-box ten feet on a man’s fence—not nearly so 
much. But to hear Janeway lay it out, you would 



THE SPRING OF 1916 


15 

have thought the Washington Monument, Taj 
Mahal, St. Peter’s, and the ruins of the Parthenon 
all rested on that precious section corner, and that 
for a railroad to take the land that included it would 
ruthlessly subvert every principle of American lib¬ 
erty—the liberty for which our Pilgrim fathers fought 
so hard and so long! The strip was actually worth 
about twenty-five hundred dollars. They gave him 
a verdict for twenty-five thousand. Of course, I ap¬ 
pealed. But the company wanted the land in a 
hurry, and he made us pay good and plenty for it 
before we got through.” 

At that moment Robert Durand, just from the 
office, ^walked briskly in on the group. 

Durand was in the greatest good-humor. He was 
a man of athletic build, with liquid brown eyes, a 
high forehead, and the alert air of the absorbed 
American business man. His face reflected traces 
of good living, and his underlip was rather full. 
Yet his general expression was a pleasant one, and 
his frank, open manner, simulating impulsiveness, 
made friends—though Durand sometimes failed to 
hold them. 

Receiving congratulations from the women on the 
verdict, he turned, with a long breath, to Harrison. 

“IPs the biggest thing we’ve ever put over on the 
labor bunch,” he exclaimed. “We’ve got those fel¬ 
lows cowed now for a good ten years—haven’t we, 
Uncle Sid?” He threw the question at Harrison 
with bullet-like intensity. 

Harrison responded without quite echoing Du- 


16 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


rand’s intensity. “Ten years is a good while,” he 
observed. 

, Durand threw out his hand toward his uncle. 
“Hang on to Janeway,” he said warningly. “We 
don’t want to let that fellow get away.” 

Harrison fenced. “He’s a high-priced man,” he 
observed calmly. 

“Not too high-priced for what’s ahead of us,” 
returned Durand, without an instant’s hesitation. 
“I’ve more news,” he added. The women were 
eager to hear it. “I signed a new munitions con¬ 
tract to-day with the British Government.” 

“Nice boy!” laughed Mrs. Harrison, amid the 
comments. 

“We’ll be in this thing ourselves before another 
six months,” continued Durand, with snapping eyes. 
“That means more orders than we can possibly take 
care of—and a big sellers’ market.” 

He suggested a drink to his uncle, and they ad¬ 
journed to the dining-room. While Durand was 
mixing what was called for, he again spoke to Judge 
Harrison about making sure of Janeway. 

“Of course Janeway’s training, while tolerably 
wide, has been more particularly that of a trial law¬ 
yer,” said Harrison, who understood quite well how 
to raise difficulties that he meant should count for 
his own real intention. “We should have to use 
him as a corporation lawyer.” 

Durand brushed aside all objections. “Why, that 
fellow can handle anything, they tell me in Chicago. 
Did you ever hear him talk?” 


THE SPRING OF 1916 


17 

“A good while before you did,” remarked Harri¬ 
son drily. “He’s coming up for dinner to-night. 
Bring Louise over and we’ll talk to him this evening.” 

Durand told his wife of the arrangement. She de¬ 
murred. “I’m going to Gertrude’s again this eve¬ 
ning. Bishop Marion and his sister are bringing a 
guest, and I promised to come over to meet her.” 

“I want you with me.” 

“But, Bob, I don’t want to disappoint Gertrude.” 

“Oh, hell!” 

“And her guests.” 

“I want you to meet Janeway.” 

Louise knew pretty well from experience where 
discussion of a request made in that tone—long 
familiar to her—would end. But she had grown less 
sensitive to consequences. “Why should I meet Mr. 
Janeway? I’ve heard nothing but Janeway to-day. 
I don’t care to meet-” 

“I want you along!” exclaimed her husband, 
silencing her with a curt expletive. “ Get ready and 
come.” 




CHAPTER II 


THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 

It was more tedious, Louise told herself, not to talk 
to her neighbor at dinner than to make the effort to 
do so. Moreover, people of sensitive disposition do 
not like to seem discourteous even to those they 
imagine they will not like. The guests at the Har¬ 
risons’ included Durand and his wife, with George 
Fargo, Louise’s only brother, a young lawyer then 
in Harrison’s office. Janeway was seated at Mrs. 
Harrison’s right, with Louise next. There was 
no lack of conversation; all six were equal to any¬ 
thing when occasion demanded. But Janeway at 
the start was silent—rather like a man tired—and 
let the others hold forth. He likewise paid little 
superfluous attention to Louise, but this she did not 
resent. 

“ Uncle Sidney has been telling me stories about 
you,” she said to him, when something presently 
seemed required. 

“Mean ones?” 

“One was mean.” 

“Let me have that first.” 

“The mean one was about a time you were trying 
to defeat somebody for speaker of the legislature. 

18 


THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 


19 

You were a railroad attorney then, Uncle said, and 
were moving heaven and earth to beat this man, 
and hadn’t succeeded. And when all the members 
were seated in session and the vote was about to be 
taken, you walked, in full sight of everybody, down 
the middle aisle of the assembly chamber to where 
the poor fellow sat, and whispered something in his 
ear. And then everybody voted against him!” 

“That ‘poor fellow’ was an out-and-out crook,” 
replied Janeway very bluntly. “I suppose your 
uncle told you, too, how I robbed him in a condemna¬ 
tion suit?” 

“He told us that this afternoon.” 

“If he has told you those two stories you know 
the worst of me—as far as his information goes.” 

“But I can’t understand,” continued his ques¬ 
tioner, “how a lawyer, like Uncle Sidney, can enjoy 
telling a story about getting beaten.” 

“It’s like a game of chess,” explained Janeway. 
“A keen player—and Judge Harrison plays every¬ 
thing keenly—is always interested in a new move, 
even when made by an inferior opponent, and even 
if it defeats him.” 

“But if law is a game, where does justice come 
in?” 

“Don’t confuse law—or the application of law— 
and justice.” 

“I thought law and justice were supposed to be 
the same thing.” 

“That’s why so many people abuse the profession 
of law. Justice is an abstraction, an elusive thing, 



20 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


often difficult to apply to particular circumstances. 
You invoke law and you hope for justice. You don’t 
always get it.” 

“Does any one ever get it?” asked George Fargo, 
listening across the table. George at twenty-five, 
blue-eyed and mild—most of the time—was a Social¬ 
ist and an aggressive one. 

Janeway looked at him, undisturbed. “As often, 
it is safe to say, as any one gets anything he’s entitled 
to in this sorrowful world. Human justice is a com¬ 
promise; it is nothing fixed, nothing absolute. A 
man should put no more faith in it than he does in 
a trade. True, we are sometimes forced to appeal 
to human justice, whereas we are not always forced 
to trade. But we should make the appeal with the 
trading spirit, rather than with childlike confidence 
—always bearing in mind, as in a trade, that we 
may be worsted, and accepting the result with a 
mild cynicism, not a bitter disappointment. The 
mistake is ever relying on so frail a reed in the be¬ 
ginning.” 

Louise cut off her brother’s retort. “And are you 
coming back to Fond du Lac to live?” she said to 
Janeway. 

“I haven’t decided to. Judge Harrison and your 
husband seem conspiring to that end.” 

“I suppose everybody’s been showering compli¬ 
ments on you over your victory. I shan’t offer 
any.” 

“Thank you.” 

“No doubt these men were guilty,” continued 



21 


THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 

Louise. She was resolved to express herself, and 
meant to add that she was sorry for their fami¬ 
lies, but Robert Durand caught and cut off his 
wife’s remark. “What’s the difference?” he asked 
sharply. 

Janeway did not hesitate to interpose a flat com¬ 
ment. “I should say, a material difference.” 

“Oh, come,” protested Durand. “You’re the 
lawyer; you have to talk to a jury. All we wanted 
was to get a part of that Union bunch—any of them 
—sent up, to scare the rest. They ought all to be 
locked up,” he added, dropping his voice as if bored 
with the effort. “They’re all crooks.” 

Janeway did not look pleased. Louise, watching 
him, smiled. “Law,” she quoted, “is a game, any¬ 
way.” 

He turned on his critic. “Why do you say that?” 

“Because you said it.” 

“Not at all,” he objected promptly. “I likened 
law to a game of chess. All figures of speech are 
misleading.” Without the slightest note of apology 
in his expression, he bent his eyes for the first time 
on Louise; they struck her as penetrating. Neither 
was there apology in his tone; only bluntness. “I 
shall, no doubt, surprise you in one respect,” he con¬ 
tinued. “Law may be a game; but if I hadn’t been 
dead sure these men were guilty, I certainly shouldn’t 
have prosecuted them; I detest criminal cases, any¬ 
way. 

“Listen to that from an eminent corporation 
counsellor,” laughed George Fargo. 


22 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Janeway retorted without a hitch. “ Don’t fasten 
such a stigma on me yet. I have no claim to it, 
George. And you’re a Socialist, anyway.” 

“That designation is a badge of honor, Mr. Jane¬ 
way.” 

“As well as a sanction among young persons for 
loose speaking,” returned Janeway. 

Louise was somewhat in doubt concerning the 
straight, heavy brows that followed the arch closely 
and guarded her neighbor’s deep-set eyes. She no¬ 
ticed that in talking, Janeway was inclined to throw 
back his head, and at such times his brows were even 
more striking. If not aggressive they suggested 
mental attitudes that might be very stubborn. Such 
qualities did not seem unpleasantly reflected in his 
manner, but the discrepancy made her suspicious of 
the newcomer into the social circle. 

He had not been described, except by Mrs. Simms 
—not good authority to Louise—as a fighter, yet his 
voice suggested stiff mental reservations; it was dry 
in quality and not always as complacent as his words. 
Often at the end of a sentence it dropped oddly, 
almost humorously, as if conceding that life, after 
all, was not to be taken too rigidly. His nose was 
ample and straight, with a rounded tip separating 
full nostrils. These served partly to shade an irregu¬ 
lar mustache, one that described at each end an 
independent angle; it was a development evidently 
neglected—at least to the extent of being allowed, 
among better-ordered features, to make its own way 
in the world. But with all its irregularity, it served 



THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 


23 

to modify the expression of a mouth beyond doubt 
uncompromising. 

Louise noticed as the dinner progressed that her 
neighbor drank freely but rather carelessly—as if 
without regard to quantity rather than really greedy 
of wine; yet as concerned the filling of his glasses the 
result was much the same. However, Louise was 
used, at her own table and the tables of her friends, 
to free drinking. 

If Jane way’s impressions of Mrs. Durand could 
have been recorded they would have been neb¬ 
ulous, as a man’s impressions on the mere meet¬ 
ing of an attractive woman usually are. The deli¬ 
cate contour preserved from her head to her feet; the 
pleasing rather than distinctive lips, and the smile 
pleasantly parting them; the cheeks without much 
color, yet little troubled by the aids of society; the 
straight, slender nose, and the not too thin-cut but 
sensitive nostrils—these combined to set Louise’s 
frank eyes very honestly before him. 

If critical he might have pronounced her cheek¬ 
bones high—they lengthened rather than rounded 
her face—and her chin, though enough, might have 
carried more emphasis. But of these canons of ob¬ 
jective criticism Janeway was ignorant, and would 
have professed himself content to remain ignorant. 
What mattered was that her hands were unobtru¬ 
sively rather than conspicuously jewelled, and that 
graceful feminine fingers held in his field of vision a 
suspended fork, while gray-blue and somewhat im¬ 
perious eyes demanded his own eyes, and fast-mov¬ 
ing, feminine lips poured out a flow of agreeable 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


24 

words, whether good-natured or critical, that were 
meant for him and no one else. All this tended to 
make him satisfied with himself and considerate of a 
passing acquaintance. 

Had he been asked whether he liked Louise, Jane¬ 
way would have said—had he consented to say any¬ 
thing—that he did like her. But not all of our im¬ 
pressions are at once defined, even by ourselves, par¬ 
ticularly at moments in which our mind is actively 
engaged in several directions. 

Janeway knew Robert Durand less than he knew 
Harrison and Jacob Simms. As heads of Durand’s 
legal staff, both Harrison and Simms had been in 
contact with Janeway more frequently than Durand 
himself. But Durand and Janeway were nearly of 
an age, and Harrison, from this, had reasoned that 
the two men might find things in common to make 
their personal relations agreeable; he was too ex¬ 
perienced a diplomat not to calculate the impor¬ 
tance of some sort of community of tastes, in work 
and play, between associates charged with serious 
business responsibilities. 

Durand, as he sat at the table, made an agreeable 
figure. He was just now in excellent humor—the 
bitter fight to convict the men that had blown up 
his mill had been won, against the gloomy predic¬ 
tions of failure that had persisted about him. What¬ 
ever discredited the agitators among his men grati¬ 
fied him, and the dinner fittingly closed a period 
covering weeks and months of continuing apprehen¬ 
sion and irritation. All the physical characteristics 



THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 


25 

of the energetic young American man of business 
were presented in Durand: the straight, sleek hair— 
Durand’s was abundant and of a light brown—and 
the cleanly shaven features. Sustained by an easy 
voice and humorous tone in speaking, he could al¬ 
ways entertain—provided he felt so inclined, as he 
did now. 

Louise continued to talk to Janeway. “You used 
to live here,” she said. 

“I spent the best years of my life in this little 
town.” 

She looked amused. “Pray, what were they?” 

“From eight to eighteen.” 

She laughed. “And you call those the best years 
of your life?” 

Janeway seemed indifferent to the sceptical note. 
“Thus far,” he answered, unabashed. 

“You weren’t born here, then?” 

“No.” 

“Your father, Henry,” interposed Mrs. Harrison, 
“came from my State, you told me—Delaware.” 

“My people all came from Delaware and Mary¬ 
land.” 

Louise continued to be polite. “So far away?” 

“My grandfather lost a young wife. He manu¬ 
mitted his slaves and fared away to forget things— 
as well as to mend his fortunes—married again, saw 
Fond du Lac, and rested.” 

“Janeway,” interposed Durand, speaking loud 
enough to cut off the conversation across the table, 
“eat a good dinner.” 



26 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“ I’m doing very well,” responded Janeway. 

“ You’re eating hardly anything,” complained Mrs. 
Harrison. 

“ After some days in court, my appetite deserts 
me,” returned Janeway, in defense. 

“I’m giving you the advice,” continued Durand, 
“ because the talk this afternoon is, you’re going to 
be dynamited.” 

“Robert!” protested his wife. 

“It may be I deserve it,” suggested Janeway. 

“That’s the talk among the strikers,” persisted 
Durand. “You’re not to be allowed to enjoy the 
fruits of your victory.” 

“Others will,” returned Janeway philosophi¬ 
cally. 

Mrs. Harrison was not pleased. “Well, do let 
Mr. Janeway enjoy them-” 

“Until the explosion?” smiled Janeway. 

“At least until the dinner is served,” said Louise, 
with some resentment. 

“If that’s a challenge to my table efforts,” ob¬ 
served Janeway, speaking to Durand, “I’m going to 
do better from now on.” 

“Those fellows are dead sore,” Durand continued. 
“But we’ll see you have a good funeral.” 

“Dynamiting itself would constitute a pretty com¬ 
plete one, wouldn’t it?” asked Janeway. 

“Dynamiting itself condemns our whole social or¬ 
der,” remarked George Fargo. 

“It does, George,” returned Janeway, in the 
manner of one averse at the moment to an effort. 



THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 


27 

“And,” he added, “when used strictly as a social 
argument, it condemns itself.” 

“Present-day society,” retorted Fargo, “is a fail¬ 
ure.” 

“So is dynamite as a remedy,” rejoined Janeway 
impassively. 

“But dynamite is only a symptom.” 

Janeway manifested no impatience. “Neither 
man nor his works can hope to escape symptoms,” 
he observed. “If we set up your Socialistic state, 
we shall only be jumping from the frying-pan into 
the fire. 

“You assert, Mr. Janeway.” 

“Because you assume, Mr. Fargo. You offer the 
most monstrous of all human assumptions, namely, 
that when all men have a fair chance—which they 
don’t have now—all men will behave themselves.” 

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t?” asked 
Louise. 

“Experience,” declared Janeway, collected as 
against one or more inquisitors, “is against the as¬ 
sumption. Even I have seen all manner of men, 
with all manner of opportunities, and they have not 
behaved themselves, and would not behave them¬ 
selves.” 

“Why?” asked Louise, without much more of an 
idea than to hear what this positive man had to say. 

“Now you are getting to the core,” he continued. 
“Because it’s human nature, I guess. I grew up in 
this town under an old-fashioned Congregational 
minister. He was strong on one point-” 




28 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Hell-fire/’ suggested Fargo contemptuously. 

“Nothing so academic as that; not hell-fire, but 
original sin. Hell-fire is, at worst, a long-distance 
menace. But who can escape in this life daily ex¬ 
emplification of the cussedness of human nature 
implanted by original sin? And incidentally, why 
quarrel with the idea of hell-fire, George ? Are you 
willing to concede nothing to the longing of the 
human heart for retributive justice? Most people 
in this world don’t get all the hell that’s coming 
to them—at least, not in the opinion of their rela¬ 
tives.” 

“But I hope,” interposed Fargo, with impatience, 
“you don’t bring all this ridiculous stuff into social 
argument.” 

“Unhappily, George, original sin was brought into 
social argument long before my brief hour. I never 
got very far in theology, but on that dogma I was 
pretty well grounded. My old minister died—Fond 
du Lac could better have spared many another man 
—but his weekly hammerings fixed themselves in my 
mind. I have tested them in the severest school I 
know anything about—experience—and they have 
stood the test. Men know what is better; yet they 
do what is worse. Other men have so done; I have 
so done. If my experience is credible, if my con¬ 
sciousness is credible-” 

“And your assumption of what’s better and what’s 
worse is credible,” interjected Fargo. 

“I accept, incorporate your suggestion, and add,” 
said Janeway, “—then my old preacher was right. 





THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 


29 

And I go even further. If there were no such 
dogma, it would be necessary to invent one-” 

“As that was invented/’ persisted Fargo. 

“I shan’t quarrel over a word. Invented ‘as that 
was,’ if you wish, to explain the downright cussed¬ 
ness in human nature. And it’s precisely that, 
George, that has upset and will upset all ideal com¬ 
monwealths. Your Socialistic state will be a failure 
for the same reason that society to-day is a failure— 
because tainted human nature, which is the basis of 
both, is a failure. Your Socialism urges against our 
society its injustice; Christian Science urges against 
the doctors their blunders; but prudent people will 
continue to call in blundering doctors just the same. 
We must do the best we can with the injustices and 
the blunders—try to correct and avoid them as long 
as it is human to err. When you show me funda¬ 
mentally different men and women, I’ll be a Socialist 
with you. All human government is contemptible, 
anyway.” 

After dinner Durand went down-town. Louise, in 
the living-room, continued to draw out Janeway. 
“Brother George,” she said, “told me yesterday that 
if you come here, he may be in your office—so Judge 
Harrison told him.” She spoke as if feeling for a 
comment on her brother. Janeway did not refuse it. 

“Your brother is a likable boy,” he responded, 
“and very bright. I think, if the Judge sends him 
to me, we shall get on.” 

“When he came back from college a Socialist,” 
Louise went on, as if in a somewhat pathetic confi- 





THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


30 

dence, “it broke my father’s heart. ‘I sent them 
good material for an American citizen/ he said to 
me before his death, mournfully, ‘and they sent me 
back an atheist and a madman.’ ” 

“Boys are certainly a difficult proposition to-day 
—everything is changing so—everything a flux. 
Look at the poor Europeans! If I were bringing up 
a boy nowadays to be a king, I should begin by 
teaching him a trade.” 

She watched Janeway narrowly while he spoke; it 
was not difficult for him to perceive how closely her 
heart was bound up in this brother. And she was 
already conscious of the influence that the new acqui¬ 
sition to the Durand legal forces was exercising on 
her brother, and was feeling her way into Janeway’s 
views and into some estimate of his character. “I 
do hope,” she went on, almost uneasily, “you are 
not a Socialist.” 

“I haven’t said anything to lead you to think so.” 
he returned, almost without concern. 

She tried to laugh it off. “That’s precisely it. 
So many people nowadays say things they don’t 
really mean. George sometimes brings in a friend 
that talks clever paradoxes and actual absurdities. 
I can’t always tell what to make of what men say.” 

“What could possibly have led you to suspect me 
for a Socialist?” asked Janeway, with mild curiosity. 

“Well, for one thing, you said all human society is 
contemptible.” Janeway made no response. “Why 
did you say that?” she persisted. 

“I didn’t say it. I said all human government is 




THE EVENING AT HARRISON’S 31 

contemptible. And I said it because it's so. And I 
said it,” he added, as if explaining to a young and 
perhaps intelligent pupil, “sort of by way of confes¬ 
sion and avoidance. I admitted what your brother 
said and introduced new matter to break the force 
of his argument. I haven’t the least taint of Social¬ 
ism about me. Though George would object to call¬ 
ing it a Taint, - wouldn’t he?” 

“Are we going to get into the war?” she asked. 

“I hope not.” 

“Why do you hope not?” 

“If we do, it will be too late.” 

“How so?” 

“We should have been preparing for such a war 
in 1913—earlier would have been better.” 

“Janeway and Robert don’t seem to hit it off very 
well,” remarked Mrs. Harrison to her husband, after 
her guests had gone. 

Harrison, not liking the observation, put in an 
objecting question. “How so?” he asked shortly. 

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the impression I 
got at dinner. Bob is always saying something mal¬ 
apropos. Henry didn’t like the dynamiting joke. 
He carried it, but he wasn’t pleased—neither was 
Louise, for that matter.” 



CHAPTER III 


DURAND AND COMPANY 

Fond du Lac, one of the older manufacturing towns 
bordering on Lake Michigan, began with New Eng¬ 
land people and traditions, but it was gradually over¬ 
run in tone and appearance by the influence of Irish 
and German immigration. This element filtered into 
the Middle West slowly, and was assimilated grad¬ 
ually and comfortably, because the foreign-born 
came in poverty and served as the village and farm 
hewers of wood and drawers of water. Friction was 
perhaps felt at times, but it found the necessary 
relief in merely “damning the Dutch” in native mo¬ 
ments of exasperation. It was only after the poor 
had become, with their large families, the well-to-do, 
and the New England stock had pretty well petered 
out, that the town, as many another American Mid¬ 
dle West community, realized that the new element 
owned and ran things. 

Even after this transformation Fond du Lac lived 
a comfortably sleepy life until the next notable in¬ 
vasion. This came in the form of manufacturers, 
seeking, with the phenomenal development of Chi¬ 
cago as a distributing centre, convenient points adja¬ 
cent to the focal city for their factory units. The 
first great mills to come to Fond du Lac, for the 

32 


DURAND AND COMPANY 


33 

particular advantages it offered for the making of 
steel, were those of the Durand Steel Corporation, 
and the families of the owners and their associates 
brought a new and highly sophisticated element into 
the social life of the town. 

The steel people, as they were soon known in the 
community phrase, were city people, and waked up 
the tradesmen with new and extraordinary market 
demands. The old townspeople—such, at least, of 
the pioneers as had survived their race-suicide pro¬ 
genitors—lived a life comfortably apart from that of 
these newcomers. The mill owners and the manu¬ 
facturers who followed the Durands with various in¬ 
dustries, and who invaded the naturally beautiful 
town almost within a decade, were likewise people 
with habits and requirements quite foreign to those 
governing the lives and affairs of the townspeople. 
The luxuries of the townspeople were the necessities 
of the later arrivals. 

The industrial growth of the town into something 
of a city came fast after the blast-furnaces and roll¬ 
ing-mills were located near it. Manufactures fol¬ 
lowed with almost bewildering rapidity. But the 
bulk of the new population now added consisted 
largely, as was inevitable, of laboring people; so fast, 
indeed, did this element pour in, that Bishop Marion 
—Bishop of Fond du Lac and a client of Janeway’s 
on at least one occasion—told the latter that more 
than once the arrival of a shipload of southern- 
Europe immigrants had put the population of a 
whole new parish on him overnight. 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


34 

The heads of the manufacturing interests did not 
as a rule coalesce socially with one another. Almost 
all of them made their own social circles, confined 
chiefly to those families whose business interests 
drew them together. The automobile makers, the 
packers, the starch manufacturers, even the brewers, 
had their own sets. These met sometimes in com¬ 
mon at the country clubs, but their social activities 
were distinct. And even the country clubs saw lit¬ 
tle of the higher-ups in the manufacturing world; 
the country clubs were patronized chiefly by the 
actual working managers of the industries—the fami¬ 
lies of the superintendents, department heads, and 
junior partners. In matter of fact, the actual own¬ 
ers clung mostly to Chicago as a social base, and 
turned to Chicago for many of their pleasures. The 
winter season found all of them in their lake-shore 
apartments for the city’s diversions, and their Fond 
du Lac homes served the women chiefly as rest-cures 
and summer retreats. 

In the steel circle the Harrison family was an ex¬ 
ception to what has been said of their associates, in 
that they had lived for many years in Fond du Lac. 
The Simmses had come to Fond du Lac from the 
North Side in Chicago, because it was Simms’s in¬ 
terest to keep close to Durand. And as Durand was 
charged by his associates with the operation of the 
Fond du Lac plant, he necessarily spent a good deal 
of his time in Fond du Lac, or, rather, between Fond 
du Lac and Chicago; he had varied social and busi¬ 
ness interests in both places. 


DURAND AND COMPANY 


35 

Judge Harrison, however, had begun in Fond du 
Lac. It was only with the growth and importance 
of his practice that he had gone perforce to Chicago 
to pursue his legal career. The elder Durand—Rob¬ 
ert’s father—meeting Judge Harrison’s sister at the 
Fond du Lac home, which Judge Harrison and his 
wife had always maintained, married her and estab¬ 
lished a relationship between the two families, and 
these, with their connections, made up the steel set, 
which was small but exclusive. 

Jacob Simms, a Chicago lawyer, nearing forty, had 
been a college chum of Robert Durand’s, and after¬ 
ward a club chum. Both men were exemplars of the 
life pursued by prosperous young American men of 
convivial tastes—men interested in athletics, sports, 
and club life and in well-shaped women who were 
equal and not averse to late suppers. Simms, with 
more talent in some directions than Durand, was a 
leader in what centred in the kaleidoscopic Chicago 
world. Possessed of an excellent physique, good 
taste in dress, and a tactful disposition, he had had 
no difficulty in securing from Robert Durand, when 
the latter took the management of the steel business 
after his father’s death, the position of general attor¬ 
ney, under Harrison, for the Durand Corporation. 
It was only after the phenomenal expansion of the 
business founded by Durand, Senior, and the conse¬ 
quent rise of corporation questions calling for the 
keenest order of legal ability, and particularly after 
the failure of Simms in various instances to secure 
results, that Judge Harrison took things in his own 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


36 

hands, and began to search for another active legal 
head for the corporation interests. Simms was kept 
as general attorney, but Harrison offered to Janeway 
the position of counsel for the various Durand cor¬ 
porations. 

Into this little circle of men and women of Middle 
West business life Louise Durand had come from 
San Francisco a very youthful bride. She once told 
Janeway the story of her girlhood and the circum¬ 
stances leading to her early marriage; it need not be 
anticipated here. But the very considerable fortune 
she brought from her father’s estate to Durand had 
accounted for the material expansion in 1913 of the 
steel companies of which he was the new head; and 
this expansion, in turn, supplied the foundation for 
the extraordinary success that opened for the Durand 
Companies at the beginning, in 1914, of the World 
War. An almost reckless building programme gone 
into by Durand—who was young, energetic, and 
fond of the limelight—in dangerous excess of normal 
plant requirements, and undertaken—as was per¬ 
haps enviously said by more conservative steel men 
—because his wife had too much money—was trans¬ 
formed in a twinkling into an unexampled readiness 
to supply the urgency of Allied munitions demands 
at unheard-of profits. 

From a monetary aspect, therefore, Durand’s 
marriage could hardly have been more successful. 
Louise, on the merits of her personality, would have 
been accorded a favored place among any new rela¬ 
tives at all well-disposed; but her debut in the 


DURAND AND COMPANY 37 

Durand circle was made under the most felicitous 
circumstances. Less could be said, as far as her 
own happiness was concerned, regarding this most 
important step in any woman’s life. The girlish 
pride in the passing glamour of the preparations and 
the well-appointed wedding, the new home overlook¬ 
ing Lake Michigan, the novel responsibilities and 
the new friends had hardly worn off before she 
realized that she, herself, really meant very little in 
Durand’s life. It was not alone that she realized she 
was only one of his interests—and a perceptibly les¬ 
sening one. He not only had other interests, such 
as fast friends, but at least one of these other inter¬ 
ests centred upon other women, and of late, particu¬ 
larly, on one other woman. 

Almost a complete realization of this domestic sit¬ 
uation had come to Louise at the time of the dyna¬ 
miting of the rolling-mills. The excitement and the 
fears aroused by this shocking event—for besides the 
material damage, the loss of life had been consider¬ 
able—had called, as it were, for a truce as to the 
domestic relations of Louise and her husband; but 
neither the untoward event nor the frequent threats 
made against Durand’s life had had more than a 
temporary effect on his conduct, which he insisted 
was nothing new, only usual. And by the time the 
dynamiters had been convicted and this story opens, 
Durand was again in the swing of his natural bent. 

On the night of the Harrison dinner, coming home 
late, he went to his wife’s rooms. A fire was burn¬ 
ing in the grate, and Louise was reading in the eve- 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


38 

ning paper the day’s story of the trial, with its ex¬ 
cerpts from Janeway’s closing speech; as victor in 
the legal battle he had been featured. Durand, 
lighting a cigarette, sat down, and Louise read para¬ 
graphs from the closing. ✓ 

“I want Janeway here to dinner when I get back 
from Chicago next week,” said Durand, after dis¬ 
cussing the exciting events of the day. Louise asked 
whom else he wished to have. He gave her the 
names and ended with those of the Simmses and a 
friend of theirs—and his—Mrs. Montgomery. 

“The Simmses, yes,” assented Louise. “Not Mrs. 
Montgomery.” 

“She’ll do for Janeway. You’ve nobody else.” 

“In a small company Mr. Janeway will take very 
good care of himself.” 

He showed his overbearing impatience. “Mrs. 
Montgomery is a lifelong friend of Janeway’s.” 

“I don’t believe that.” 

“What are you talking about? Jane way intro¬ 
duced me to her. Anyway,” he said angrily, “I 
want Mrs. Montgomery included.” 

“I’m free to say I don’t care for her.” 

“Does that mean you won’t invite her?” 

Louise discussed Mrs. Montgomery with her hus¬ 
band pretty freely. Each knew the real reason for 
her refusal to have Mrs. Montgomery at her table, 
but neither was in a position to uncover it. Durand, 
obstinate now, and incensed, persisted that she be 
included. “I suppose I’ll have to invite her my¬ 
self,” he grumbled at last. 


DURAND AND COMPANY 


39 

Louise was cold. “I’ve no doubt she’d come on 
such an invitation,” was all she said. 

“Look here, Louise,” exclaimed Durand, flinging 
his cigarette into the fireplace, “it’s time for you and 
me to have an understanding.” 

“We have reached a clear one on that point.” 

She had blanched a little in her defiance. And 
she spoke hurriedly, with a nervous tremor, but she 
looked at him with determined eyes. Durand 
was much surprised. He could hardly believe his 
senses; for the first time in their married lives his 
wife had unhesitatingly traversed a decision he had 
made, and was not to be bullied into receding. 
Louise herself was hardly less astonished at her 
temerity. But there had been ample preparation 
for her stand; many givings-in, many useless pleas, 
many tears, and many bitter reflections. There were 
no tears now, not even an inclination, but there was 
much accumulated resentment and doggedness of 
purpose. Durand tried again. 

“What have you got against Mrs. Montgomery?” 
he demanded. 

She could not bring herself to accept his brutal 
challenge. She had no proof, anyway—only suspi¬ 
cions; but suspicions that burn a woman’s heart and 
sensibilities to ashes, when she realizes she is being 
unlawfully supplanted. 

“I don’t like her,” she replied, controlling herself, 
and with hard, helpless tones. “I have invited her 
here before to please you. I won’t have her here 
again.” 



40 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“ Nothing that pleases me pleases you/’ he snorted, 
as if expressing a final conclusion. “You don’t like 
my friends. You don’t care any more about me, for 
that matter. But don’t imagine that’s going to 
break my heart.” He spoke in a tone of forbear¬ 
ance, tempered by disgust with an intractable part¬ 
ner. His wife, being young and inexperienced, would 
not leave the situation to stand where he had fixed 
it. She thought she ought to defend herself—which 
was only bringing fuel to his fire. 

“You know that isn’t true, Robert,” she pro¬ 
tested. “And you know you ought not to insist on 
including that woman among my guests.” She 
looked at him so pointedly that her meaning was 
unmistakable. 

He grew more stubborn. “The trouble with you 
is,” he remarked with finality, “you’re too old-fogy; 
Maymie Montgomery is right up-to-date—she’s for 
fun and a good time. She’s a man’s woman—that’s 
why you don’t like her.” 

Louise was desperate. Though knowing she was 
right in her stand, her collected antagonist was still 
torturing her, and doing it, despite all she could urge, 
with an air of injured innocence. 

“I don’t like her for more reasons than that,” she 
retorted. “But I give her credit for one thing: she 
doesn’t sail under false colors; she doesn’t even 
counterfeit decency.” 

Durand laughed. He had the situation well in 
hand. “ Still harping on the old string—‘ decency ’! ” 

“Decency is a trifle older than indecency,” said 
his wife, trembling with anger, “but only a trifle.” 




DURAND AND COMPANY 


41 


“ Well, I’ve always lived my life without blue laws, 
and I expect to continue to do so. I’m beginning to 
think you’re as much of a crank on decency as that 
boob Socialist brother of yours is on everything else. 
I’ll serve final notice on you now that I intend to 
choose my friends, and give you the same privilege. 
I’m not jealous. But if you expect to run my house 
you’ll entertain people I like when I say so.” 

Louise only buried herself behind her newspaper. 
The fires of a long endurance had flared up in her, 
and she was set in her attitude beyond all of his in¬ 
fluence. Grievances raked up and grievances in¬ 
vented by Durand in his abuse of her had no effect 
on her rigidity. He pricked her sensibilities with 
taunts and reproaches, but she would not even 
reply. Angry in turn at his inability to tempt her 
to wrangle, he started to leave the room. 

“ Robert! ” She spoke just as he reached his door. 
He turned. She had risen. “You say we’ve reached 
the parting of the ways. We have. You’ve long 
been wanting to be rid of me. You’ve been asking 
why I don’t go to France, to Italy, since I am always 
talking about it. Now I’m going. In just as few 
months as I can arrange my affairs and secure pas¬ 
sage, we will part company for all time. You’ll have 
a free rein then with your Athletic Club companions 
—and with Maymie Montgomery. But I warn you 
now, Robert Durand, if you ever try to drag me into 
a divorce court, I’ll fight you as long as I have life 
left to fight with!” 

He had driven her to the point to which he had 



42 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


long tried to drive her—the point at which she would 
get out of his way until he could entirely rid himself 
of her—and he went to his room in a complacent 
frame of mind. 


CHAPTER IV 

JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 

Judge Harrison had a town house in Fond du Lac, 
and on out the Shell Bay Road, just northwest of the 
city, a country place to which he made his escape, 
to use his own words, at the first sign of spring. Ac¬ 
cordingly, every spring he watched with jealous eye 
for the coming of the first robin. There was a per¬ 
ennial rivalry between him and Bishop Marion as 
to which should spot the earliest bird. March io 
was the date accepted by both as the most probable 
for the return of the winter truants, but the schedule 
of these red-breasted travellers was subject to many 
contingencies. 

Nor were they fastidious as to their first stopping- 
place. Bishop Marion, who lived in a big, smoke- 
grimed, red-brick house next the old procathedral, 
in the lower town, maintained that the Judge, living 
amid maples and elms, in the exclusive part of the 
town, enjoyed an advantage. Judge Harrison— 
never without resource—pointed out, on the other 
hand, that robins are not aristocrats, and urged that 
the Bishop often snatched victory from his own 
grasp through his habit of getting up earlier in the 
morning; and that to equalize opportunity, the 
Bishop should either rise later, or should not, in 

43 



44 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


fairness, look out of doors until he had massed and 
breakfasted, as Judge Harrison expressed it. 

However it was, as to advantage, the Bishop was 
quite as often victor in the contest as to which 
should call the other up to announce the first robin 
as Harrison in his more attractive surroundings up¬ 
town. Between the two men it was an affair of 
honor; each accepted without question the word of 
the other over the telephone, even in midwinter, 
when it was assumed by both—in the event of a 
stray bird’s appearance being spotted by either— 
that the unfortunate had trusted to the promise of a 
mild season, or had been hampered pecuniarily in 
his plans for getting south. But if any one else in 
the community, even members of their own house¬ 
holds, announced a robin out of season, the Bishop 
and the Judge presented to the claimant the united 
scepticism of experienced observers, and frowned to¬ 
gether on sensational and unauthenticated reports. 

The coming of the robin always gave to Judge 
Harrison the initial impulse to desert the city house 
for The Farms, as he modestly termed his handsome 
estate. Elizabeth, his wife, had called it after the 
old Delaware home of her father, Eagles Nest. The 
Judge’s objection to this was that he had never, 
even as a boy, seen an eagle within a hundred miles 
of the place. But this difficulty did not deter Mrs. 
Harrison. And her choice of a name appeared on 
the road pillars at the entrance, and as well in the 
society columns. 

Judge Harrison had a second spring token to lure 



JANE WAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 45 

him from town. His old man servant, Oliver, sur¬ 
vivor of many combinations of serving men and 
women in the Harrison menage, had been from time 
long gone accustomed to search the Big Woods, as 
the hills on the extreme northwest corner of The 
Farms were called, for the first arbutus blooms. 
When Oliver wanted new rubber boots, he was not 
infrequently “stood off” by the Judge in his requisi¬ 
tion. But, familiar with his master’s crotchets, the 
venerable darky learned to wait till winter was on 
the wane. When he told the Judge he needed new 
boots to look for arbutus, permission to buy them 
was never long deferred. In this way Oliver became 
an arbutus authority, as his master professed to be 
a first-robin authority. At the earliest sign of a 
spring-like sun, that might warm the melting snows 
and encourage the tiny pink-white blossoms to peep 
forth, Oliver was tramping the depths of the Big 
Woods and spying upon the openings to bring in the 
coveted flowers. 

It meant for him a ten-dollar bill—and one much 
easier to get than at other times a one-dollar tip 
for more important adventuring. Thus Oliver always 
outdistanced neighboring and jealous gardeners in 
the arbutus race, and appeared occasionally with the 
welcome prize so early that the Judge accused him 
of having a private supply in the hothouse. 

Some three months after the close of the dynamit¬ 
ing trial, Janeway was to come to the Harrisons’ for 
a week-end. Negotiations looking toward his assum¬ 
ing control of the Durand Corporation legal affairs 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


46 

had been going forward during the interval. Du¬ 
rand, in particular, seemed to have taken Janeway 
up strongly. Janeway had more than once been a 
guest of Durand’s at his home, where, despite the 
domestic strain and the humiliations put on her by 
the entertaining of Durand’s convivial friends, Louise 
resolutely maintained her position as hostess until 
she should leave for good what she had once fondly 
thought to be really her own home. Janeway, at 
these little drinking parties of Durand’s, conducted 
himself with reserve, never leading; rather as one 
just outside the boisterous fun that characterized 
some of the entertainments. 

Janeway had not, however, seen Judge Harrison’s 
country place for over a year. On the afternoon he 
arrived from Chicago—a day behind schedule—Har¬ 
rison took him out to show him what he had done in 
the interval. For one thing, he had built a new 
house. 

The Judge took his guest through bypaths down 
to the entrance to the grounds, and, turning to 
secure an effect, walked him up the formal avenue 
leading to the residence. “Elizabeth,” he observed, 
“thought the French traditions of this part of the 
country would justify something in the chateau 
style. It’s too formal, but Elizabeth likes it.” 

“Don’t you?” 

“As much as I like any new-fangled thing. The 
truth is, Janeway, I’m sick to death of fuss and 
feathers. I’d like to live, like my grandfather, in a 
log cabin. When I talk simplicity my friends laugh 



JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 47 

at me. But I mean it. I used to think the loss of 
money a stupendous calamity. I don’t any more; 
I’m beginning to regard it with equanimity—espe¬ 
cially if it’s the other fellow loses it. I don’t fancy 
a stone house, myself,” he explained in his pseu¬ 
do deprecatory fashion—an inoffensive affectation. 
“The only stone house in Appleton, where I got my 
early impressions of life, was the county jail. The 
association of ideas has always sort of spoiled a stone 
house for me, but Elizabeth got to talking with an 
architect, and this is the outcome. It has its com¬ 
pensations, for when the Socialists come in we law¬ 
yers will all be living in stone houses with the sort 
of Michael Angelo windows they had on our county 
jail. And I shall be accustomed to it.” 

He pointed across the wide slough that bore the 
name of The Skokie, and cut through one corner of 
his holdings. “I’ve added that ‘forty’ since you’ve 
seen the place,” he went on. “You know all this 
land—all this part of the country, in fact—belonged 
once to my grandfather; that’s why I wanted it back. 
I was brought up here. My father had to sell this 
place to educate the boys. He took us to Appleton. 
And that was the end of my farming. 

“But I’m just naturally a farmer, Janeway. I 
love it. Why, sometimes I get on a train and run 
out to my Nebraska ranch just to see them turn over 

a new piece of sod-” 

“Still got that Nebraska land?” 

“Some of it—about ten sections—little over six 
thousand acres. It was railroad land, you know, 




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


48 

and I got it for a song. You were in the office when 
I picked it up; I wanted you to buy some-” 

“I never was cut out for a millionaire, Judge, was 
I?” 

“Well, sir, I just enjoy seeing them turn that vir¬ 
gin soil over with a sod plough. Think of it—soil 
that never since the creation of the world has been 
touched by the hand of man. My grandfather”— 
Judge Harrison pointed to the grass under their feet 
—“did the same thing right here that I am doing in 
Nebraska-” 

“With this difference,” interposed Janeway, “that 
your grandfather did it himself; you’re hiring some¬ 
body to do it for you.” 

“A generation from now no American will be able 
to see that done in his own country,” continued Har¬ 
rison, unperturbed. “It’s filling up too fast—too 
fast. The Russians have overrun that part of the 
country where I am, out there—trying all the time 
to cut roads through me and all that-” 

“Not willing to drive a couple or eight miles 
around-” 

“Janeway,” exclaimed the Judge with conviction, 
“speaking as an American—not as a steel maker— 
I’d like to put up the bars and keep every blamed 
emigrant out of this country for the next hundred 
years.” 

Janeway raised his hand as if to say: “Stop right 
there.” “Judge,” he said with emphasis, “you’ve 
told me a great many things in my day. Now I am 
going to tell you one: The very day that the stream 







JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 49 

of our European emigration stops, that day the tide 
of our material greatness turns; that day it touches 
high-water mark, and from that day it will steadily 
and inevitably recede. 

“ Nothing—not all our fine words, our fine boast¬ 
ing, will avert that consequence. We owe our na¬ 
tion’s present material greatness to the fact that it 
has been fed by a constant stream of European emi¬ 
grants to do our work. Americans don’t work any 
more—don’t you realize that ? We haven’t used our 
hands for two generations. Whoever is turning your 
Nebraska sod, whether Swede, or Slav, or German, 
you may be sure it’s neither Leatherstocking nor an 
Indian brave. The Indian has too much sense to 
touch a plough, and Leatherstocking’s “gifts” have 
been developed entirely in the direction of getting 
somebody else to do his work for him. Poor men 
from Europe, as able physically as we ever were and 
as clean morally, have dug our canals, built our rail¬ 
roads, manned our factories, worked our mines, and 
tilled our farms. Shut your gates as soon as you 
please—I don’t care anything about that. But 
when you do, remember you pay that particular 
price for doing it. 

“ Think a minute, Judge. There is one part of our 
country, and only one, that has never been fed by 
that European stream. The penniless emigrant had 
no chance to get a job there, because the cotton, 
tobacco, and corn were picked by slaves. There 
was no free land there when our West was new. So 
the Irishman and the German, the Swiss and the 




50 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

Scandinavian went to Illinois and Wisconsin and 
Iowa and Minnesota. What is the result ? The part 
of our country which missed that stream is to-day 
the poorest part of it materially, and the most pitiful 
politically—whole communities, States in fact, given 
over voluntarily to illiteracy and steeped in ignorance 
and bigotry. And yet that part of our country once 
held the highest and best of our nation’s tradi¬ 
tions-” 

“ You’re forgetting the Civil War, Janeway-” 

“No, I’m not. But if you want to see what 
Americans left to themselves, pure and undefiled, 
have done, look to the mountains of North Carolina 
and Tennessee, where moonshine and in-breeding 
stalk hand in hand. They don’t get any immigration 
down there—they don’t want any.” 

“Well, shut up, Janeway, anyway, and listen to 
me. I didn’t bring you out here to talk to me; I 
brought you out here to talk to you. Let us con¬ 
template the restfulness of this landscape and let our 
shortcomings momentarily be forgotten. 

“When I got hold of this place again Elizabeth 
asked me to suggest the best way to Treat’ it. I 
said: ‘Let it alone.’ Then she consulted a man from 
Boston and proceeded to ‘landscape’ it. See that 
old barn, the other side of the garage ? They wanted 
to scrap that, Janeway. I said: ‘No! You can 
spoil the rest of the four hundred and sixty acres as 
much as you like—not that. I reserve that for my 
own. ’ ” He spoke parenthetically and apologetically. 
“That barn was on the place when my father lived 






JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 51 

here. I can remember the hay-loft, and the cutter 
up there in the summer, and the horse and cow stalls 
down-stairs—and at one end the chicken yard, you 
know. 

“Well, I’ve got the same thing now. A hay-loft— 
hay forty dollars a ton! And the riding-horses and 
cows down-stairs, and chickens, by gum!—my own 
chickens. How many ? Eighteen—hens—widows at 
that. Elizabeth complained the roosters kept her 
awake, so we soft-boiled them. About half the time 
I feed the hens myself. And I get the eggs myself. 
They hide their nests—exactly the way they used to 
when I was a boy. Sometimes I stumble on a sur¬ 
prise nestful of eggs; well, sir, you wouldn’t believe 
how rich that nest of eggs makes me feel. It’s the 
nearest sensation to getting something for nothing I 
ever experience. Sometimes I get caught for five or 
ten thousand dollars at a clip in Steel. But if I hap¬ 
pen next day to find a nest of eggs, painstakingly 
hidden away by a thrifty old hen, I feel as prosper¬ 
ous as all-get-out again.” 

Mrs. Harrison joined her husband and her guest. 
The Judge pointed once more. 

“That’s my vegetable garden over there. The 
real millionaire, Janeway—rich or poor, I don’t care 
whether he’s got money in the bank or not—is the 
man who can grow his own vegetables and fruits, 
and eat them the day they’re picked. These infernal 
market-growers cultivate, not fruits that taste good, 
but fruits that’ll keep. They’ve got that market 
quality down so blamed fine their berries aren’t fit 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


52 

to eat; they’d keep forever. But I like the green 
stuff from the garden. As I get older I grow more 
like Nebuchadnezzar—my taste runs to grass—sys¬ 
tem seems to require it. Now, this is that kind of 
an old-fashioned vegetable and fruit garden where I 
grow things that taste the way they used to taste.” 

“Take care of it yourself?” asked Janeway, look¬ 
ing at the well-kept plot through the smoke rising 
from his cigar. 

“Oh, I get out into it once in a while,” asserted 
the Judge, but in the half-hearted tone of a man 
knowing that he faces immediate exposure. 

His wife burst into a laugh. “Sidney Harrison!” 
she exclaimed. “What a story! Don’t you ever 
believe that, Mr. Janeway. His gardening is a per¬ 
fect joke. What he does do every once in a while is 
to drive up and down Kinzie Street in Chicago, stop 
at all the seed stores, and buy every rake and tool 
and hoe they show him-” 

“Labor-saving devices,” muttered the Judge, fee¬ 
bly defensive. 

“—and store them away in that rickety old barn. 
He won’t even let the gardeners use them. There 
they lie, rusting their weary lives away.” 

Her husband stood his ground. “The point is, 
Janeway,” he maintained firmly, “they are there. 
The tools are there, the garden’s there, if I take a 
notion to hoe something the hoe’s there, and the 
thing’s there to be hoed—hm?” 

Elizabeth spoke to Janeway in a confidence. “I’m 
going to have a grand auction some day.” 



JANEWAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 53 

“Don’t you touch anything in that barn,” inter¬ 
posed her husband. “ A tramp came along last sum¬ 
mer, and Elizabeth, passing all my old shoes, gave 
him the only new pair I had in the world.” 

“Does he still look to the robins for his spring 
calendar?” asked Janeway of Mrs. Harrison. 

“He does. But I don’t. I’ve a much better cal¬ 
endar than that. I always know when spring is 
near, whether the robins come or not, for when the 
days begin to grow the least bit longer Sidney in¬ 
variably begins to talk about moving that old barn. 
He ought to have respect for its age, but he hasn’t. 
He moves it every spring, regularly. I call it his 
barn de luxe. It must cost him more than the house 
to keep it going. I suggested putting the thing on 
wheels. But every time he moves it, he sets it down 
on a stone foundation that would hold up the Ma¬ 
sonic Temple.” 

“Ever make tunnels in the hay, Janeway?” asked 
the Judge, pushing the conversation along. “If you 
feel like it to-morrow morning, go to it; the hay’s 
there.” 

“Why, to-morrow’s Sunday!” exclaimed his wife, 
simulating a shock. 

“Very good. Comb the hay out of his hair, the 
way my sister used to comb it out of mine, and send 
him to Sunday-school,” responded Harrison, unruf¬ 
fled. 

When they got back to the house Gertrude Durand 
was there with Jim Kennedy. Kennedy was a young 
lawyer in Janeway’s Chicago office, a poor Fond du 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


r 


54 

Lac boy whom Janeway had trained and taken to 
the city, and who had recently astonished his home 
town, enraged Robert Durand, and amazed his own 
happy mother by winning the favor of the richest 
girl in it, Gertrude Durand. Kennedy and Gertrude 
stayed to dinner. The talk turned to steel and to 
the phenomenal expansion of the Durand business. 

“But, Uncle Sidney / 7 asked Gertrude imperiously, 
“when are we going to get another one of those nice 
extra dividends ? 77 

Judge Harrison pursed his mouth. “By jing, 
you’ll have to ask Bob about that. I don’t know 
any more. I guess labor’s getting the extra divi¬ 
dends these days.” 

‘ ‘ Oh, dear ! 7 7 exclaimed Gertrude, in despair. ‘ 1 And 
here I’ve made poor Jim put all his savings into 
Steel, with the idea that he’d have no end of extras ! ” 

The Judge looked at Kennedy grimly. “The only 
consolation Jim will have is that he’s in the same 
boat with the rest of the rich men.” 

“I arrive always and everywhere too late,” re¬ 
torted Kennedy. “Now that I join the ranks of 
the rich they all get poor.” 

“It’s really got so now,” continued the Judge, 
“that it’s the rich man who has to hustle to pay his 
bills. Simms was growling the other day about the 
high prices of everything, from butter and eggs to 
barbers and hotels; he kicks at the awful hotel tariffs. 

“ ‘ What’s happened, Simms,’ I said to him, ‘is that 
the small fry have paid us the compliment of imi¬ 
tating us. We began it; we pointed the way. To- 


JANE WAY VISITS EAGLES NEST 55 

day every producer, whether he sells lumber or 
prunes or just plain sand, is in touch with every 
other producer of lumber or prunes or sand to “ regu¬ 
late ” production and prices. In every territory 
manufacturer meets manufacturer, jobber meets job¬ 
ber, to “ regulate” prices; the meanest retailer com¬ 
bines with the other meanest retailer to “stabilize” 
the price of peanuts; it is a hard-and-fast combine 
every step of the way from the cradle to the grave. 
Of course, these birds all camouflage their real ob¬ 
jects. The lumbermen meet as “What-Nots,” the 
bartenders as “Eagles,” the hucksters as benefactors 
of society. The result is always the same. These 
conventions of philanthropists may be entertained 
by great humorists, enlivened by the cavorting of 
short-skirted women, decorated beautifully with 
flowers. But it’s like a wake and a funeral—and 
after the feasting and under the flowers there lie the 
remains of that enemy to prosperity and progress— 
competition/ 

“It reminds me of a book I read recently, ‘The 
Personal Recollections of Bill Jones/ Bill an¬ 
nounced in Chapter One that his ambition, from his 
earliest years, had been to make the world better 
for his having lived in it. This sounded like a fair 
proposition—one of the fair kind Janeway would put 
up to a jury. But when I got through the book and 
had digested Bilks efforts—and they were interesting 
—I saw they had indeed been aimed at making the 
world better; but it was in the direction, more par¬ 
ticularly, of making it better for Bill Jones.” 



CHAPTER V 


/ LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY 

After dinner the two men adjourned to the library. 
The evening was cool and a fire burned in the grate. 
Between Jane way and Judge Harrison there existed 
a bond of sympathy that draws men together and 
holds them together better than most common traits, 
namely, a freemasonry of brains. 

They discussed, with the reserved diplomacy in 
which both were experienced practitioners, the figures 
at which Janeway could be induced to accept the 
proffered position of general counsel for the Durand 
Companies, and the details of the arrangement—and 
drifted from the more important topic to the current 
political situation. Judge Harrison, as National Re¬ 
publican Committeeman for the State and a member 
of the executive board, always kept in touch with 
national affairs, because the national policies had a 
very direct bearing on the steel business. He liked 
politics, anyway, and enjoyed the share of power 
that fell within his sphere of influence. Janeway 
himself had always felt the force of the Judge’s views, 
and drawn from them many of his own ideas of 
American polity. But Janeway wanted now to 
make, and did make it very clear that his duties as 
counsel should include no political obligations of any 
sort. 


56 


LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY 57 

“It is not necessary they should,” said Harrison, 
quite serene in his programme. “I shall turn over 
to you everything except political responsibility. So 
far as Republican policies are concerned, I, myself, 
shall try to keep track of them; and Simms is very 
useful with the powers at Washington; he and Bob 
are hand-in-glove with the departments. And no¬ 
body pays any attention to Congress lately, anyway 
—the cheapest men, in the House especially, that 
have ever met in Washington. 

“I don’t know whether it’s a sign I’m getting old, 
Janeway,” continued Harrison, “but I notice almost 
every time I come in contact with them what an in¬ 
ferior set of men, in Congress and out, make our 
laws. You see it strikingly, too, at a national politi¬ 
cal convention. Where are the equals of the last 
generation of politicians and lawmakers ? Our own 
profession is the sole exception, and it is an excep¬ 
tion only at the top.” 

“What has happened,” responded Janeway, weigh¬ 
ing Harrison’s remark, “is that business is taking all 
the American brains that used to supply our politi¬ 
cal life. Business is as voracious as the twin daugh¬ 
ters of the horse leech. Our great rewards are not 
in politics to-day—that’s the trouble; they are in 
business. It’s inevitable,” continued Janeway, “ that 
talent should seek the avenues of greatest reward. 
When Michael Angelo wrought and Leonardo paint¬ 
ed, the highest honors of their time and place went 
to painters and architects and sculptors. Leonardo 
nowadays would be an aeronautical engineer, or 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


58 

transforming the snows of the Sierras into hot-point 
electric irons for thrifty women to start disastrous 
fires with in hotels and apartment-houses.” 

“I shouldn’t mind the beggarly politicians so 
much,” persisted Harrison, “if the people had held 
up. When I was a young man and lived up north 
we used to ride to Chicago in the day coaches of the 
train. There was a parlor-car at the hind end, but 
it was mostly empty. I rode among the people, be¬ 
cause my business came from them; so did Matt 
Carpenter, our United States Senator. More than 
one wintry morning I’ve seen Tim Howe, Postmaster- 
General of the United States, after getting out at 
Green Bay for the six-o’clock morning train, curled 
up on the last seat of a day coach, next to the 
Baker heater, in his ulster, for an after-daylight nap. 
It was a thousand times more interesting to sit out 
in the day coach and talk to the people than it was 
to isolate yourself in the parlor-car. 

“I used to ride—I have ridden—everywhere on 
the train except on the cow catcher—and enjoyed it. 
I’ve talked with the engineer in the cab—and he was 
always a stalwart American. In the baggage-car 
I’ve watched an old, gray-bearded express messenger 
surreptitiously open a barrel of black bass, put on at 
Oshkosh for South Water Street, filch one out of the 
ice for his Sunday dinner, nail up the barrel again— 
and called him an honest man; I’d have trusted him 
with every dollar I had in the world. He knew the 
fish were netted outside of the law, and took his 
private toll out of them on the way to market. We 


LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANE WAY 59 

didn’t think it a serious malfeasance—and I was the 
railroad attorney myself at that time. 

“ To-day I ride to the city in a train of parlor-cars; 
I talk to no one, unless it is to some millionaire who 
takes not a blamed bit more interest in me than I 
do in him. If I have to take a train of day coaches, 
I’m shocked at the people that ride in them—igno¬ 
rant of everything, impossible to talk to—Huns, Po- 
lacks, Greeks, Letts, dagoes—specimens of every 
savage tribe of Europe and Jews from every conceiv¬ 
able European haunt of the ten tribes. I’ve en¬ 
countered in those day coaches Spanish Jews from 
Constantinople, Syrian peddlers from Lebanon, wild 
men from every jungle in the Balkans—but fewer 
and fewer of our old-fashioned Americans. Where 
are they ? What’s become of our ancestors ? We’ve 
run the population up to one hundred and ten mil¬ 
lions. But—the quality! Janeway,” demanded 
Harrison sternly, “have you faith, in the face of it 
all, and with such mongrel crews as we gather in 
Washington, in the stability of our political institu¬ 
tions?” 

“Faith in them as the best yet devised by 
man.” 

“That’s no answer.” 

“I have hope in them.” 

“In the ability of people to govern themselves?” 

“Better than anybody else can or will govern 
them.” 

Harrison shook his head. “They’re not making 
much of a job of it to-day,” he growled. 




6 o 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“ They’re not governing themselves to-day. 
They’re being governed by a minority of one.” 

“What’s the remedy?” 

“Pare the presidential patronage claws.” 

“There’s too much liberty, anyway.” 

“Not enough, Judge. When abuses in popular 
government arise, the remedy should always be the 
same; instead of restricting the power of the people, 
add to it; I’m for the referendum.” 

“Mob law!” said the Judge grimly, but without 
releasing his cigar from between his teeth. 

Janeway was at no loss for a retort. “Our mob 
is a pretty good one yet.” 

They heard voices in the hall. A tapping on the 
open door of the room interrupted the conversation, 
and Gertrude Durand, with Kennedy, walked in on 
them. 

“What wickedness are you two plotting in this 
darkened room?” demanded Gertrude, as she 
stopped at her uncle’s chair and threw her arm 
about his neck. 

“Why, mostly trying to save the country,” ex¬ 
claimed Janeway, looking with approval on Ger¬ 
trude’s shining dark eyes. “Hello, Jim.” 

“That’s what everybody’s doing,” complained 
Kennedy, in the dry tone that profitably character¬ 
ized his speech in court and out, “except me. I’m 
only trying to save my salary—and making a poor 
job of that. Judge,” he continued, “they sustained 
your demurrer to-day in the Telephone Case. Simms 
had a message.” 


LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANE WAY 61 

Harrison, pleased, gave only indirect evidence of 
it. “ You two didn’t come out here to tell me that,” 
he said, eying the couple with approving distrust. 

“No,” confessed Gertrude, “I came out to coax 
my adorable auntie to come to my house, without 
fail, Tuesday afternoon. The women are to meet 
to talk over the Children’s Hospital bazaar.” 

“It will take exactly one thousand bazaars to get 
that Children’s Hospital going, Gertrude,” prophe¬ 
sied Harrison, in sceptical mood. 

“Now don’t you be pessimistic, Uncle Sidney,” 
said Gertrude reprovingly. “We are going to get it 
going. And we should be delighted to have you 
and Mr. Janeway-” 

“But greatly surprised,” suggested Janeway, “if 
we appeared.” 

Gertrude had a rejoinder ready. “Bishop Marion 
is going to be there.” 

“No credit to him,” returned Janeway. “He has 
to be.” 

“I hope you two are not out without a chaperon,” 
said the Judge. 

Gertrude laughed. “For a wonder, we’re not. 
Louise came over to help us coax.” 

Harrison pricked up his ears. “Louise? Where 
is she?” 

“Down-stairs with Auntie.” 

“We’ll go down,” said her uncle. “Two pretty 
women here at once demand our best attention.” 

After the discussion of the hospital benefit—a set 
charity idea of Gertrude’s and an annual fixture— 




6 2 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


had subsided, Janeway walked over to where Louise 
was talking with her aunt. 

“I was coming over to-night,” he said to her, when 
Mrs. Harrison left them, “to call on you and Mr. 
Durand, but Judge Harrison got me into the library 
and I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—shake loose from him.” 

“You’d have missed Robert,” responded Louise. 
“He’s in Chicago to-night.” 

“But I’m coming very soon,” continued Jane¬ 
way. 

“We shall be glad to see you any time; and I hope 
before I go away.” 

“You are going away?” 

“To Italy.” 

He looked at her very deliberately and with uncon¬ 
cealed surprise. They were standing now. Jane¬ 
way asked her to sit down, and, drawing a chair, sat 
before her. “You’re not afraid of the submarines?” 

She said not. He gazed at her reprovingly. “You 
ought to be,” he remarked at length. 

“I’m not,” she insisted, but without any attempt 
to convert him to views of her own. 

He continued to regard her with surprise, but his 
eyes were not unsympathetic. 

“You’ll think better of that,” he predicted. 
“Your husband will hardly let you expose yourself 
in that way.” He used a tentative tone, but since 
he did not put the remark in the form of a question, 
Louise avoided an answer. “Uncle Sidney,” she 
said, instead, “ told us you, yourself, were very nearly 
a passenger on the Lusitania .” 



LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY 63 

“I cancelled passage the day before it sailed—for¬ 
tunately.” 

“Was it the warnings?” 

He almost ignored the implication. “I’m sure I 
should have cut a poor figure swimming in Irish 
w r aters at any season of the year. But men charged 
with business matters have less choice in their move¬ 
ments than women of leisure.” 

Louise shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Doesn’t 
everything depend on what we consider our responsi¬ 
bilities and our situations?” 

The question failed to draw him out. “How long 
are you to be gone?” he asked. 

“That doesn’t even remotely answer my question, 
does it?” she objected. 

“About situations, responsibilities, no. The rea¬ 
son I didn’t respond is because I hope you haven’t 
any exaggerated ideas about being needed over there 
—wild ideas on that point prevail so now among 
American women—and men, too, for that matter. 
But you don’t impress me as being of the hysterical 
type that nourish delusions or fall for silly propa¬ 
ganda.” He spoke with little of tactful or gentle 
endeavor to win her to his views—rather, his tone 
and manner, like his words, were blunt. Only a 
blend of honest concern for her welfare redeemed 
them from unpleasantness. “They seem to think 
they are called on personally,” he continued, “to 
get into the limelight and save the world; Atlas him¬ 
self had nothing on their conception of their job.” 

“I’m as innocent as a baby of anything like that,” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


64 

protested Louise. “My trip is purely a personal de¬ 
sire for a change.’’ 

His eyebrows rose. “Great heavens!” he ex¬ 
claimed. “For a change!” 

She saw her mistake and flushed. “ Oh, I shouldn’t 
say that, should I? No matter!” There was im¬ 
patience in her tone. “ Call it a whim, anything you 
like—I’m just going.” 

“Then I have the less hesitation,” he returned 
gravely, “in trying to dissuade you from going. If 
you were a mere female with a mission I should keep 
still; that kind ought to go—Europe just now is the 
place for them. But not for those who would be a 
loss to—” He was suddenly conscious of a sensa¬ 
tion of floundering. 

It did not escape Louise. She smiled in revenge. 
“To whom?” she asked coolly. 

“To those to whom they are dear,” he returned 
collectedly. 

“Or ought to be,” she suggested, with a sceptical 
laugh. Yet the quality of her laugh was not un¬ 
pleasant. They were looking directly into each 
other’s eyes, and their exchanges were animated. 
“I hope,” he returned, “you wouldn’t expect me to 
approve such a qualification. And I renew my own 
question—how long are you going to be gone?” 

“Indefinitely.” 

“Jingo!” He paused for a minute. “And no 
protests will change your determination?” 

“You are the first to utter any.” 

“The first ?” 



LOUISE ENCOUNTERS JANEWAY 65 

Both the tone and the manner of his question 
warned her. “Well, it so happens you are my first 
confidant/’ she rejoined. 

“Oh, I see. You’re really not going at all, then.” 

“But I am.” 

“Your husband will never let you.” 

She only rose to her feet as if the discussion were 
profitless, laughing again—not significantly or cov¬ 
ertly, just naturally, at his seriousness. But her 
laugh again fell pleasingly on Janeway’s ears. 

He was reluctant to give up. “I’ll lay a wager 
you don’t go,” he exclaimed, rising in turn, and re¬ 
fusing to be dismissed. 

Louise, smiling reservedly, paused. “What shall 
it be?” 

“Whatever you like,” he answered, betrayed into 
something like eagerness. 

She hesitated just long enough to dismiss him. 
“Whatever it might be, I couldn’t honestly take it 
—for,” she declared, with deliberate emphasis and 
meeting his eyes unafraid, “I’m going.” 


CHAPTER VI 
THE BISHOP’S STORY 


Sunday morning Judge Harrison and Janeway 
played golf at the Country Club. 

“Mrs. Durand tells me she is going to Italy,” said 
Janeway, while the two men, sitting on a bench, 
were waiting at a tee. 

Judge Harrison, watching with contemplative in¬ 
terest the teeing of a ball by a player ahead, made 
no comment on the remark. “Why any sane 
woman,” continued Janeway, in the absence of re¬ 
sponse, “should want to get into that mess, I can’t 
imagine. Has she said anything to you about it?” 
he asked, when there was still no comment. 

Grizzled and thin in his jersey, the Judge spoke 
with reluctance, but as if of something that had to 
be faced. “She told me last night. I’m sorry, of 
course,” he went on. “I said what I could to dis¬ 
suade her; guess it’s no use. Louise is sane enough, 
as far as that goes; she’s too sane—that’s part of the 
difficulty. The fact simply is, Bob is a pretty free- 
liver. I don’t pry into his affairs, but I guess he 
usually has some woman on the string. Louise isn’t 
used to that kind of thing; it doesn’t set well with 
her. Just recently I understand it’s a woman that 
used to live here, named Montgomery. I imagine 
the reason Louise is going away is because she and 
Bob have agreed to disagree. 

66 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 


67 

“No use,” continued the Judge. “When things 
get that bad, if a woman’s sensitive and high-strung, 
it’s better to quit. Your honor, Janeway. What 
did I make this hole in before?” 

So many things were to be discussed by the two 
men concerning the legal affairs of which Janeway 
was to take hold for the Durand Companies, that 
Janeway spent most of the week at Eagles Nest. 
Tuesday afternoon the Judge and he played golf 
again. On their way home they drove around by 
Gertrude Durand’s, to pick up Mrs. Harrison. 

Gertrude lived in the old Durand home. The 
house had been built by her father when he went to 
Fond du Lac to live; it represented a period in the 
progressive story of Fond du Lac architecture when 
towers were the distinctive feature of the few so- 
called rich men’s houses. A tower in the design of a 
pretentious Fond du Lac residence was as inevitable 
as a steeple on a Fond du Lac church, and the 
Durand tower, being the aggressive expression of the 
biggest man to come to town during the tower ob¬ 
session, was a little worse than its earlier and less 
elaborate neighbors. 

But the house was comfortable. The high ceilings 
were a difficulty and the extravagant panelling was 
an eyesore, but Gertrude was, first of all, loyal to the 
old home. She had time and taste and ample means, 
and spent all three earnestly in successive campaigns 
of what her Uncle Sidney termed “ remuddeling ” her 
father’s house. 

The golfers, entering Gertrude’s living-room, found 


68 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


the bazaar meeting ended and tea being served to the 
committee, which included, among others, Louise 
and Bishop Marion, who seemed, not very success¬ 
fully, trying to make his escape when Harrison and 
Janeway arrived. Heartened by the coming of two 
more men, the Bishop took fresh courage and fell to 
talking with Judge Harrison. Janeway sat down by 
Mrs. Harrison. 

“You remember Bishop Marion, of course,” said 
Airs. Harrison to Janeway. 

“Very well,” returned Janeway, “though I haven’t 
seen him for some time. When he came to Fond du 
Lac I was living here.” 

“We are all fond of his sister. She keeps house 
for him, you know,” continued Airs. Harrison. 
“They are from the East, I believe.” 

“No, the South,” said Janeway. “He was sent 
to this part of the country originally for his health. 
He’s not really rugged yet, but it seems to have built 
him up. He comes from South Carolinian stock, 
the Legares—the ‘ fighting Legares ’; there was a con¬ 
siderable Huguenot element, he has told me, in 
South Carolina.” 

“From the fighting Legares!” exclaimed Airs. 
Harrison. “Then he has degenerated, for he’s the 
mildest-mannered man in the world.” 

“Don’t be deceived,” observed Janeway. “The 
fighting qualities may be under discipline, but they’re 
there. He made a good client.” 

Airs. Harrison asked questions about the Legares. 
Janeway gave her what he could, even to speculating 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 69 

as to whether Mrs. Stowe took her name for Simon 
Legree from the famous Carolinian family. But 
Janeway had more than the Legares on his mind, 
and when he could, got nearer to Louise. 

She stood at that moment talking on the edge of 
the circle to which Janeway had been introduced. 
The lines of her figure profited by the simplicity of a 
tailored costume and a turban heightened by an 
aigrette, and she stood so erect that even her head 
and shoulders added to the impression of decision 
conveyed by her eyes. It was only as she sat down, 
at his request, that Janeway noticed how well her 
slender ankles matched her well-shaped feet. 

“I see you are going,” he remarked abruptly and 
no more loudly than necessary, but in a tone intimat¬ 
ing reproach. 

She looked at him in mild surprise. “What do 
you mean ? How can you ‘ see ’ ? ” she demanded. 

“It’s written,” he responded, with leisurely con¬ 
fidence. “You look trim as a baby battleship al¬ 
ready.” 

“I don’t know what a ‘baby battleship’ looks 
like,” she smiled, “but I wash I felt like some sort of 
a fighting craft. I’ve been having a touch of what 
you men call ‘cold feet’ about venturing abroad. 
But I’m going.” 

“I was sure you were,” he declared, in amiable 
banter; “no one ever takes my advice.” 

“Oh!” she protested, lifting her eyebrows as she 
looked at him. “How can that be? I hear that 
many people seek your advice.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


70 

“Not quite the same thing, but no matter; I want 
to inflict at least a suggestion on you.” 

“That’s very kind.” 

“But may I?” 

“I’m in a mood to listen to anything. Of course, 
you mustn’t tell me I can’t go.” 

“It’s the submarines, and I’ve been wanting to 
tell you-” 

“Thinking of my danger?” 

“Of you and your danger,” he retorted. “But on 
your part you mustn’t make fun of me. There is a 
line of French steamers running from New York to 
the Mediterranean; I don’t know the name of it at 
the moment, but I can get it for you. You are going 
to Italy—take that line. Those steamers are not 
molested by submarines.” 

“How extraordinary!” she exclaimed, with wide- 
open eyes. “ How can that be ? ” 

“It is the line of travel to and from Rome, kept 
open for those whose necessities take them to and 
from the Vatican. I imagine the Germans dare not 
sink those boats—or do not; they have rows enough 
on their hands as it is.” 

Louise drew a long breath. “Well,” she said, with 
relief, “that should prove a very valuable sugges¬ 
tion. Will you really let me know about it?” 

He was ready to continue the conversation, but 
she turned to ask an irrelevant question of Gertrude. 
Gertrude was talking with the Bishop, and now took 
occasion to tell Janeway that Bishop Marion had 
spoken that afternoon before the Woman’s Club. 



THE BISHOP’S STORY 


71 

“What did you talk to the women about?” asked 
Jane way of the Bishop. 

“He gave us a perfectly wonderful talk,” declared 
Gertrude. 

“I don’t know how palatable it was,” said the 
Bishop, “but the ladies were kind enough to receive 
it politely. I ventured to call attention to what I 
conceive to be the debt woman owes to Christianity; 
I reminded them of a few of her tribulations before 
our Christian era, and of some of the things Chris¬ 
tianity has done to relieve her of them and to ele¬ 
vate her in her relation to men; how our Divine Lord, 
in choosing the Blessed Virgin for His mother, had 
set up a new type of womanhood and motherhood. 
And how innocently ungrateful it seemed to me for 
women nowadays—enjoying the privileges and liber¬ 
ties Christianity has brought them—to march up 
and down the land abusing Christianity, which they 
do in the most irresponsible manner possible. I re¬ 
ferred to w T hat Christianity had done to keep our 
women from living in Moslem harems. I recalled 
how a saint and a pope, aided only by Venice and 
Spain, with France and England very deaf to his 
appeals, had organized the defense of Europe at a 
time when the Turk was well on his road to over¬ 
whelm it. I spoke of the battle of Lepanto-” 

“New ‘stuff ’ for a woman’s club,” suggested Har¬ 
rison. 

“But I brought it up to date,” continued the 
Bishop, apologetically, “by linking it with Chester¬ 
ton’s poem, and I only instanced that the Gulf of 




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


72 

Lepanto was the point at which was once decided 
the question as to whether Europe should be Chris¬ 
tian or Moslem; and ventured to add/’ he continued, 
with delicate emphasis, “that east of Lepanto there 
still are no women’s clubs.” 

“But, Bishop,” exclaimed Gertrude, “I can’t 
imagine who inflicted that awful woman on us to 
talk on divorce after you, or, rather, at you.” 

“It was only that she wanted very much to bring 
me to her way of thinking,” suggested the Bishop 
composedly. 

“Why, she positively ranted,” said Louise. 

“I didn’t mind that much,” said Bishop Marion, 
“but I confess I’m always sorry to hear a woman 
defending the divorce and remarriage evils of to¬ 
day. It isn’t that it’s so revolting; but it always 
seems to me, when I think of what Christ has done 
for woman, like biting the hand that feeds you. Of 
course, they do it without realizing what they 
do.” 

Judge Harrison spoke from his corner. “The only 
objection I have to this divorce business is that it 
throws too many cold-storage women on the market. 
I’ve got a client now with two daughters—fine girls. 
He claims he can’t get ’em married; the second-hand 
females grab oh the boys.” 

“Don’t be too hard on the poor women, Judge,” 
rejoined the Bishop. “They are the prime sufferers 
through divorce. Humanly speaking, I sometimes 
feel I might be reconciled to irresponsible divorce 
and equally irresponsible remarriage, if woman could 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 


73 

be benefited by it. I think my own Lawgiver had 
it in mind that they could not, when he restricted 
men in this regard. He saw what any intelligent 
man may now see, that woman is the victim and 
man the sorry profiteer by the divorce court. Small 
wonder that after being preyed upon these unfor¬ 
tunates turn again to prey on men.” 

Louise listened intently. 

“ Bishop, you’re too soft-hearted,” interposed Mrs. 
Harrison. “You haven’t had enough experience 
with women.” While Bishop Marion looked in sub¬ 
dued humor at Mrs. Harrison, Judge Harrison spoke 
again. 

“Janeway ought to be able to give us points on 
this,” said he. “Have you found divorcees trouble¬ 
some, Janeway?” 

“I agree with Bishop Marion whenever I can,” re¬ 
marked Janeway diplomatically. “I certainly agree 
with him,” he added, with characteristic emphasis, 
“that woman is the divorce victim in the great run 
of cases. Woman is naturally more decent than 
man. There are a few innocent women that profit 
by release from a brute; there are also female vam¬ 
pires that profit by divorce, because it extends the 
scope of their operations; the divorce court is to 
them what a bank is to a business man. These crea¬ 
tures get their line of credit—such as it is—from our 
divorce courts, and transact their business of ‘vamp¬ 
ing’ under legal auspices. 

“But excluding these two classes and coming to 
the great majority of cases, divorce is now only a 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


74 

legalized means of wife desertion, and our unfortu¬ 
nate girls are its victims. 

“ Our poor boys are in just as bad a way,” objected 
Harrison. “This client with the daughters is a rail¬ 
road executive. He has a son also. ‘If I send him 
to college/ he says to me, ‘a lot of half-baked pro¬ 
fessors—gas-bags that couldn’t earn an honest liv¬ 
ing outside of an endowed institution—will make a 
Socialist of him. There’s no use trying to make a 
business man of him; business to-day, if it’s any¬ 
thing more than running a peanut stand, is dis¬ 
creditable. An American business man, if his turn¬ 
over reaches a million, is looked on as a thief.’” 

“You know, Bishop,” interposed Gertrude, “I’m 
just a hot-blooded little pagan, but I really did ap¬ 
preciate every word you said. And he had a most 
wonderful woman there with him and his sister, as a 
guest,” she continued, speaking with characteristic 
energy to Janeway. “I wish you could have met 
her. By the way,” she added, looking accusingly at 
the Bishop, “you said she had a story, and you 
promised to tell it.” 

“You mean Miss Virginia Hampton? Her story 
is unusual,” said the Bishop. 

“At the beginning of the French Revolution,” he 
continued, “a French noblewoman, the Countess de 
Large, found herself stranded in the Netherlands. 
Europe was seething over the outbreak in France, 
and the Countess conceived it to be her duty to re¬ 
join her sovereigns in Paris. She had been a favorite 
at the French court, and the Princess de Lamballe, 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 


75 

companion of Marie Antoinette, had been godmother 
to her daughter and only child, a little girl of six. 
By the time the Countess reached Paris, the flames 
had so spread that she found she would be very for¬ 
tunate if she could get out of France with her head 
on her shoulders. After much hardship and diffi¬ 
culty and by bribing the mistress of Talleyrand with 
a necklace worth a king’s ransom, the Countess got 
a permit to leave France. Accompanied by a faith¬ 
ful maid and her little girl, she made her way in con¬ 
stant peril to Marseilles; there she arranged for pas¬ 
sage on a ship to North America. 

“The flight across the harbor to the ship had to 
be made at night. In the darkness and confusion, 
among other escaping refugees, a tragedy occurred: 
the maid and the little girl, put into one boat, were 
taken to the ship for Boston. The Countess, in 
another boat, was put aboard a French ship bound 
for the Brazils. 

“This French ship, on its way to South America, 
was captured by a Spanish cruiser—Spain being then 
at war with France. The Countess, as a passenger 
and an emigree of distinction, was treated with the 
utmost consideration, and placed by the Spanish 
court in the care of the Countess of Montijo, mother, 
by the way, of the ex-Empress Eugenie. 

“The Countess de Large, overwhelmed by the 
loss of her child, remained for years with her pro¬ 
tectors in Spain. The maid in charge of the little 
girl reached Boston, but without being able to speak 
one word of English or knowing a soul in the whole 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


76 

of North America. She proved, however, a remark¬ 
ably resourceful maid, and turning to a trade she 
had learned in her youth, she opened a millinery 
shop; with her earnings she thus provided for her 
young charge and herself. When the little one 
reached school age, the maid-milliner sent her to the 
best private school in Boston, where one of her school¬ 
mates was Theodosia, daughter of Aaron Burr. 

“ Meantime things were happening in France. 
Ten years had elapsed and Napoleon was firmly in 
the saddle. Wishing to add lustre to his rather mis¬ 
cellaneous court, he invited the exiles of the French 
nobility to return to France, and the Countess de 
Large, aged by her troubles, returned to Paris. The 
alert little Boston milliner got wind of what was 
doing, and, converting her resources, made arrange¬ 
ments to return with her charge, now a girl of six¬ 
teen, to France. So effective was her diplomacy 
that she got the little girl and herself under the 
wing of the Minister we were then sending to the 
French court—John Jay. Minister Jay numbered 
in his diplomatic suite a young man from Charles¬ 
ton, South Carolina, son of a distinguished Revolu¬ 
tionary general, after whom Fort Sumter was named. 
You remember, Judge, we had two able men in 
South Carolina in Revolutionary times—Marion, the „ 
Swamp Fox, taking his nickname from the theatre 
of his operations along the coast—and not an an¬ 
cestor of mine, by the way—and Sumter, operating 
in the hills. Sumter was known as the Game Cock. 

“On the voyage young Sumter fell violently in 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 


77 

love with the youthful aristocrat, but her chaperon 
held him sternly aloof. On reaching Paris, to the 
joy of all concerned, the Countess de Large and her 
daughter were reunited. Young Sumter pressed his 
suit. There were differences in religion to be con¬ 
sidered, but these were not prohibitive. It was, 
however, a matter of the gravest concern to the 
Countess de Large to ascertain just who the Sumters 
were in South Carolina. Some of the French letters 
making these inquiries are in the hands of her de¬ 
scendants in Charleston to-day. The two were 
married. 

“Sumter, advancing in the diplomatic service, 
was in time sent as our Minister to Brazil. There 
a daughter was born to the Sumters; she was named 
Brazilia Sumter. Brazilia, in due time, married a 
gentleman of a Carolinian family, to whom she 
bore a number of daughters. These children came 
along during and after the time that our Civil War 
had laid waste to the South. The family, as all 
our families, was reduced to new and disastrous 
straits. But, like brave Southern women, three of 
these sisters set about to earn their living and take a 
place in the new world about them. They started a 
girls’ school in Washington and made a complete 
success of their undertaking. The youngest sister, 
now retiring, having saved up from her years of hard 
work and devotion to the training of American gen¬ 
tlewomen, a little capital, now plans to take it to 
the relief of her distressed French relatives—whom 
none of the American branch now living has ever 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


78 

seen—and to give herself—literally—for she will un¬ 
dertake the hardest kind of nursing and, I fear, never 
come back—to the cause of France. This is Miss 
Virginia Hampton, whom you saw with my sister 
this afternoon/’ explained the Bishop to Gertrude. 
“They would both have been here with me, but for 
passport exigencies that took them to Chicago on 
the five-o’clock train.” 

“What a splendid woman,” murmured Louise in¬ 
tensely. 

“And going to brave the submarines!” exclaimed 
Gertrude. 

“She will accompany me and my sister on my ad 
limina visit to Rome. And from Italy we can get 
her into France.” 

Of all the listeners in the Bishop’s circle Louise 
seemed most absorbed. The party was breaking up. 
Conversation became general, but Louise sought the 
side of the Bishop and kept close to him. Leaving, 
she managed to engage him for a moment apart. 
“You are going to Italy, Bishop Marion?” 

“In about a fortnight, Mrs. Durand.” 

“You are taking your sister and a friend?” 

“Yes.” 

“Bishop Marion, I want to ask a very great favor 
—may I, too, go with you?” 

He mastered his complete surprise with another 
question. “You are not serious?” 

“Quite serious, Bishop Marion.” 

“You don’t really mean you are going to Italy?” 

“I certainly am.” 


THE BISHOP’S STORY 


79 

“But your passport? You know they are impos¬ 
sible to get, either to France or Italy, except under 
the gravest showing, and then only after intermina¬ 
ble delay s.” 

She faced him quite collectedly and with the ut¬ 
most determination reflected in her bearing. “Mr. 
Simms is attending to that. He gets anything we 
need from Washington,” she smiled. “And just 
now, when I heard you say you and your sister and 
Miss Hampton were going! I can’t tell you,” she 
exclaimed, “how I felt. It just seemed like a special 
Providence!” He perceived the restraint she spoke 
under—he saw how deeply she was moved; it was 
written all over her manner. “ ‘What an opportu¬ 
nity,’ I said to myself!” She spoke rapidly on. “If 
I may go with you—I mean, provided, of course, it 
would be agreeable to the ladies, after you have 
talked with them—it will be the greatest kindness 
you could possibly do me.” 

“Indeed,” declared the Bishop, recovering from 
his astonishment, “I shall be greatly pleased to have 
you join our party. And I think I can safely speak 
for my sister and our guest. I will let you hear from 
me to-morrow. But your passage,” he asked, in 
perplexity. “Can you possibly secure it now?” 

No difficulty gave her any pause. “I will man¬ 
age all that—somehow—if only I may go.” 


CHAPTER VII 


ENTER MAYMIE 

Mrs. Maymie Montgomery had but one grudge 
against fortune: she had been born in a small town 
and of people in extremely moderate circumstances. 
To her credit, however, it should be added, in pass¬ 
ing, that once embarked on her career she made 
every effort to overcome these twin disadvantages. 
Her father had been a local sign-painter, and this, 
in Fond du Lac, at least, did not spell affluence. 
As to her own endowments, Maymie had no dispo¬ 
sition to rail at fate; regardless of how others viewed 
them, Maymie was both contented and defiant. She 
was possessed of that sort of intelligence which, tinc¬ 
tured with cunning, passes at times for sagacity, and 
in the mild phrase of her mild father, whose quiet 
habit of chewing tobacco contributed to his taciturn¬ 
ity, Maymie was a a smart girl.” 

Proving, even from babyhood, a good camera 
subject, Maymie had been assiduously and effec¬ 
tively photographed; and her father had taught her 
the art of posing. At seventeen, Maymie, by sheer 
force of moderately good looks and an aptitude for 
tasteful dressing on a slender outlay, had fought for 
and established for herself a social place in Fond du 
Lac. She secured perhaps more than her share of 

80 


ENTER MAYMIE 


81 


attention from the young men, and was thoroughly 
disliked by the girls. In these circumstances, urged 
by a growing ambition, Maymie decided it time to 
wake up what she esteemed slow Fond du Lac 
society. At a church fair she consented to pose in 
a series of tableaux in the Greek—whatever that 
may mean. 

But whatever it might nave meant, worthy women 
present, of the congregation, thought they knew per¬ 
fectly well what it did mean, and raised a riot then 
and there. One tableau was enough—for the 
women, at least; Maymie woke up, not alone the 
spectators but the whole town. The church was 
split. Everybody took sides. While the excite¬ 
ment was at its height, Maymie announced her en¬ 
gagement to a sympathetic admirer—one of those 
that thought the church prudes too hard on May- 
mie’s art. And at eighteen her marriage to this ris¬ 
ing young dry-goods merchant of Fond du Lac, 
Jerry Montgomery, followed as a matter of course. 
It might have been successful, except that it un¬ 
luckily gratified Maymie’s paramount ambition, an 
ambition to see something of Chicago. Her hus¬ 
band, an exception—and in this case an unfortunate 
exception—to most country merchants, took his 
wife to Chicago sometimes on his buying trips. This 
familiarized his wife with the attractions of the city 
and with his business friends. 

At twenty, Maymie was already done with Fond 
du Lac and small-town married life; the taste of the 
city’s opportunities was like the scent of blood to 



82 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


an awakened tigress. Her first shock, after getting 
her divorce, came when she found that the travelling 
man on whom she had reckoned as an anchor to 
windward was a married man. Not alone that, but 
he had a wife in no wise minded to divide the hus¬ 
band’s salary or surrender him to a divorcee. In 
point of fact, she scared the life out of Maymie, as 
Judge Harrison once expressed it to Janeway—and 
was the only woman, or man, he added, as far as he 
knew, that ever did. 

Maymie, undaunted by this reverse, found work 
in a North Side photographic establishment in Chi¬ 
cago, where both portrait work and unusual art 
.studies were turned out. She left this place before, 
not after, the postal authorities had begun unwel¬ 
come inquiries into its chief source of revenue. But 
this was, after all, the game of pikers, and the clever 
woman landed a job—to quote Harrison again—as 
assistant manager and saleswoman in a high-class 
and reputable Michigan Avenue art store. 

She was almost particularly fortunate in selling 
high-priced pictures to well-to-do men with a taste 
for art. And though she was not able to hold a 
customer very long, she made hay rapidly and al¬ 
ways left, if I may once more quote Harrison, a 
memorable dent in a man’s pocketbook. 

By the time she had been made manager and 
changed the name of the store to the Michigan 
Avenue Art Galleries the proprietor’s wife had di¬ 
vorced him, but this was the merest sort of a fleet¬ 
ing episode in Maymie’s life. She by this time knew 


ENTER MAYMIE 


83 

precisely what she wanted; she wanted, like many a 
wise and energetic merchant, to retire from business 
before getting old—in time to enjoy some of the 
good things of life. And when, one day, Robert 
Durand happened into the galleries, she decided that 
he would do to retire on. 

It was in that store that Durand first met and 
talked art with Maymie. The subject seemed large 
to be covered in a single interview; subsequent visits 
to the galleries only confirmed Durand’s impression 
that a topic elevated and engrossing needed for prof¬ 
itable deliberation an atmosphere somewhat more 
removed from the commercial tang of a place in 
which pictures were sold. 

Slow progress was made by Durand in this direc¬ 
tion, however, since for him the astute saleswoman 
dealt only in rigidly scrupulous art. On the other 
hand, Durand, an experienced swordsman, held well 
on to his pocketbook; he did not part recklessly 
with ten-thousand-dollar checks; in fact, he did not 
part with them at all. Nor did Maymie part with 
her scruples. And this situation, paradoxically 
enough, stimulated both sides to fresh dispositions 
for the contest. 

At length, by a happy chance, and to show May¬ 
mie how sincere he was in visiting the galleries purely 
as an interested amateur, Durand one day took 
Simms and Mrs. Simms into the place to look at a 
picture, while he looked at the difficult feminine 
manager. To their mutual surprise, Mrs. Mont¬ 
gomery and Mrs. Simms found in each other girl- 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


84 

hood Fond du Lac friends. Congratulations and re¬ 
newed introductions afforded pleasure to all. A 
luncheon was not hard for the two ladies to arrange, 
and this was followed by a week-end party at the 
Wheaton farmhouse of a sister of Mrs. Simms—a 
farmhouse where congenial, if sophisticated, friends 
sometimes met, and where Durand thereafter some¬ 
times drove when too busy to get home to Fond du 
Lac. In the weeks following, art topics were occa¬ 
sionally taken up with the Simmses and with Du¬ 
rand at Wheaton, where a spice of amateur midnight 
cookery and Durand’s travelling cellaret added zest 
to the parties. And with the ice thus cracked, if 
not broken, subjects of mutual interest were dis¬ 
cussed later under the subdued light of golf-club 
candles, where quiet contributed to a calmer judg¬ 
ment on mooted topics. 

Maymie was nothing if not fastidious, being at 
times grieved over neglected opportunities; it seemed 
now so easy. But under the spell of kindly advice 
in her business affairs from a highly successful exem¬ 
plar of big business itself, further study of art for 
art’s sake was definitely transferred from the galleries 
to the laissez-courre atmosphere of Michigan Avenue 
club and hotel supper life—the Simmses serving as a 
buffer to overcome Maymie’s instinctive timidity in 
familiarizing herself with these new surroundings— 
surroundings often eagerly talked of by her, fre¬ 
quently enviously heard of, but never before by her 
actually achieved. 

Only one cruel uncertainty remained for her in 



ENTER MAYMIE 


85 

the situation, and it had not seemed wise on this 
subject to consult the oracle earlier. However, in 
the seclusion of a private dining-room not too far 
removed from the Art Institute, she one night sum¬ 
moned courage, the Simmses being present, to ask 
Durand a dreaded question. The evening was a 
sort of epochal occasion, for Maymie had promised 
to pose that night in the Greek for her dear friends, 
and expectations ran high. But despite the fact 
that she had brought her costume along in her hand¬ 
bag, she seemed not precisely in the vein. 

And oddly enough—it would appear to one not 
versed in feminine strategy—she now chose the mo¬ 
ment before retiring to dress for the tableau to put 
her long-deferred question. All the evening she had 
been distrait. Wine, usually so subtle in relieving 
her moods of depression, was this night of no avail. 
She drank generously, but her sadness persisted, and 
at length she looked courageously at Durand across 
the disordered table, and asked him point-blank 
whether he was a married man; and Durand told her 
point-blank that he was a married man, and point- 
blank added that she knew-well he was a mar¬ 

ried man. 

The Simmses defined what followed as a scene. It 
was a scene. Maymie had not only flung her gaunt¬ 
let at the head of the young steel king, but he had 
volleyed it rudely back into her face. 

Neither was a tyro at the game they were play¬ 
ing. Maymie perceived that the situation called for 
a display of force, and she supplied it with a ven- 



86 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


geance; even Durand was taken aback. Reproaches 
led to the recriminations quite conventional in such 
circumstances. Maymie, in a burst of tears, de¬ 
clared her settled horror of all married men, and 
essayed, albeit not too harshly, to reproach Mrs. 
Simms, thus leading to a few tart exchanges be¬ 
tween devoted friends, but closing with an affection¬ 
ate exoneration of Mrs. Simms by Maymie, now the 
front and picture of unprotected distress. 

This opened the way for Mrs. Simms to essay oil 
on the troubled waters, though naturally rather 
vainly. However, at all costs, a public disturbance 
was to be avoided; this was Simms’s business. In 
the curt but useful phrase, he read the riot act im¬ 
partially to both contestants for the mastery. He 
skilfully divided his abuse, and afterward gave way 
to personal indignation—just enough to dominate 
the noise—at being mixed with his wife in such a 
scene. However, the affair was a real bout for 
points; and Mrs. Simms was compelled to act as 
nurse, and Simms, much to his disgust, as stretcher- 
bearer. 

The evening ended in a draw, both parties retreat¬ 
ing to previously prepared positions. Fresh liba¬ 
tions were poured before the altar of platonic friend¬ 
ship. But Maymie did not pose. 

For the brave little woman some anxious days 
followed. Would Durand come back? He would 
not; and did not. Would the telephone ring, while 
she hastened to it and the now familiar dialogue fol¬ 
low: “Is this the Michigan Avenue Art Galleries? 


ENTER MAYMIE 


87 

Mrs. Montgomery ? One moment, please. Mr. Du¬ 
rand is on the wire.” For the next few days, while 
the telephone often rang, it never brought those 
welcome words; Durand did not call up. But when, 
after a fortnight of “standing pat” all around, the 
art telephone did ring, and Mrs. Simms, after tender 
greetings, invited Maymie to her sister’s Wheaton 
farm for the week-end, not hope, but certainty, filled 
Maymie’s breast. She knew beyond a reasonable 
doubt that Durand would drop in at the suburban 
home—as he did. 

Far from any unpleasant recollection of the scene 
at the club, no one apologized, no one was angry. 
No one’s feelings had been hurt, because no one had 
any to hurt; it was only to shuffle the cards and deal 
again. A proper degree on Maymie’s part of re¬ 
sentment, tempered by reserve, at the now unfor¬ 
tunate situation in which she found herself—of get¬ 
ting mixed up with a married man—a situation that 
it seemed nobody could remedy—was natural and 
was conceded. It was too late to ask who was to 
blame. Certainly, she felt, not Maymie. The dread 
of breaking up a home, she confided to Mrs. Simms, 
had been her guiding star in resolutely keeping aloof, 
unprotected as she was, from married men. Mrs. 
Simms was consolatory, because she sneezed when 
Durand took snuff. And this fancy of Durand’s for 
Maymie’s company, she in turn assured Maymie, 
was only a whim and meant no harm—the little par¬ 
ties were only a distraction from the cares of busi¬ 
ness. This well-meant suggestion—parenthetically 




88 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


—went the wrong way with Maymie, for she had, 
since it was inevitable, no idea of letting it go at a 
whim. But she declared herself interested to learn 
that Durand’s craving for diversion was due not 
only to too close attention to business, but likewise 
to an unbalanced ration. 

Durand felt that a complete reconciliation could 
best be achieved by another supper in town, from 
which the Simmses, as a possible disturbing factor, 
might be eliminated. Although this was at first a 
shock to Maymie, she felt, in the end, that it might 
be better to leave them out; indeed, she could hardly 
now face Mrs. Simms at a private supper with a 
married man; Durand had involved Maymie in a 
trying situation in ever getting married at all before 
he met her; but as evidence of penitence on his part, 
on the day before the supper, a set of sables arrived 
at Mrs. Montgomery’s apartment, and the untoward 
incident of his marriage was regarded as atoned for. 

The supper, as it progressed, established at least 
a declaration of devotion on Durand’s part, and of 
aims on Maymie’s part. She proclaimed her inten¬ 
tions honorable and marriage her cherished goal— 
not marriage to a rich man or a famous man, but 
just to a man who would give her the tender, true 
comradeship she had long but ineffectively sought. 
Durand was pushed into more promises than he had 
intended to make, but under pressure made them, 
for Maymie could and did talk plainly to him of his 
wicked behavior, only confessing, unsteadily, her 
own miserable weakness in not being able to resist 


ENTER MAYMIE 


89 

listening now, after having grown too deeply at¬ 
tached to him before the awful truth had been made 
knoym. 

She then gave herself up to gaiety and kept Du¬ 
rand in a merry mood. When she stepped with him 
into the closed car waiting for them at the street 
curb, her spirits receded again. Durand was sensi¬ 
ble of the change. 

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “You 
don’t act very crazy about this car.” He had just 
told her the car and the man that drove it were 
hers. 

Maymie made no answer. She only looked 
seriously ahead, into the blinding headlights that 
streamed down Michigan Avenue. 

“Is it the car or your furs that don’t suit you?” 
asked Durand, his heavy voice cracking a little in 
reaching unsuccessfully for a note of tenderness. 

Maymie, sinking into the cushions, her little 
peachblow face framed by the sables, drew a deep 
sigh. “Oh, Bob,” she murmured, “they are both 
lovely—just lovely. But, Bob, don’t be angry with 
me, will you?” 

Bob was practical; he did not commit himself. 
“That depends,” he croaked, with raven uncertainty. 

“I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but some¬ 
how I feel as if we ought not to meet again after 
to-night.” 

Durand could be rude. “What does that mean?” 
he asked harshly. “More money?” 

“Oh, you vile man! Do you measure everything 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


90 

by money? No, a thousand times! It’s because I 
get so blue sometimes. I can’t help it. I try to be 
brave.” Durand responded with a slight and un- 
enthusiastic grunt. “But it’s wrong, Bob,” she per¬ 
sisted conscientiously, “absolutely wrong. Poor 
boy! We’re getting too fond of each other, and 
neither of us has the courage to say so. Oh, why is 
every happy thing in this world wrong?” 

“You’re cuckoo!” was Durand’s unsympathetic 
comment. “Stay with me and you’ll wear dia¬ 
monds.” 

“ When I’m with you,” she confessed, with a touch 
of shamefacedness, “I’m just happy—absolutely. 
Every woman, I suppose, gets lonesome when she’s 
away from ”—she looked shyly up—“ the only person 
in the world she cares anything about—and the only 
one that cares anything in the world about her. 
Oh!” She sprang forward from the cushions with a 
hysterical little laugh—as if to drag gaiety from the 
very teeth of fell despondency. Durand slipped his 
arm behind her, to encourage this flash of lightheart¬ 
edness. “Didn’t Mr. Simms,” she bubbled, “look 
funny at Wheaton Sunday night, eating that half¬ 
raw ravioli and sputtering talk all the while! That 
man’s certainly a scream.” Whereupon Maymie 
gave a spirited and excellent imitation, to Durand’s 
great enjoyment, of Simms. “Oh, dear!” she ex¬ 
claimed, putting the strong right arm resolutely from 
her waist, and shaking her shoulders as she nestled 
back into the down and looked out of the side win¬ 
dow at the blur of passing cars. 


ENTER MAYMIE 


9 i 

“What the devil’s the matter?” demanded Du¬ 
rand. “I don’t like freaky women!” 

“I’m sad, Bob, that’s all. What about?” she 
asked, echoing his question, but without the exple¬ 
tive pointing it. “Oh, everything. Here I am, al¬ 
most without friends-” 

“The Simmses are good enough friends, aren’t 
they?” 

“Only because they want to do what you want 
done, Bob. They wouldn’t look at me, if it weren’t 
for you! My own friends will all be cutting me, as 
soon as I’m seen out with you. What has a poor 
girl got nowadays but her reputation?” 

Durand grunted. His companion flamed, and he 
had to come through, as Judge Harrison would say. 

“Haven’t I said I’d marry you when I get a di¬ 
vorce?” he demanded, drawing her to him. 

“Then there’s poor Louise,” she murmured re¬ 
signedly in his arms. “What about her?” 

He appeared to feel not even annoyance at the in¬ 
famy of his wife’s name on his trull’s lips. “What 
about poor me?” he blurted out. “Haven’t I told 
you I’d take good care of her?” 

“But how does little Maymie know you wouldn’t 
want Louise back when you’re tired of Maymie? 
Oh, Bob !” She threw her entire remaining store of 
reluctance into her appeal. “Give me up !” 

“You’re cuckoo,” he said soothingly. “Get over 
it.” 

He made little of her now feeble attempts to 
resist his importunities. She only managed to pro- 



92 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

test he was terrible and to beg him to go back to his 
wife. 

Facilis descensus Averni. Particularly after the 
first few trips. 


•1 




CHAPTER VIII 

fc“ * 

THREE YEARS AFTER 

In June, 1919, Janeway’s Fond du Lac offices occu¬ 
pied space embracing the northeast corner of the 
eighth floor of the Durand Building, in which the 
legal department and the executive offices of the 
Durand Companies were housed. As the first so- 
called skyscraper—though only an eight-story build¬ 
ing—built in Fond du Lac, the Durand Building was 
noticeable in the business district for its cream-white 
terra-cotta exterior and marble interior. It stood 
as a substantial monument to the success of the 
steel industry in Fond du Lac, and to the progressive 
ideas of Robert Durand, who had been responsible, 
just prior to the great war, for the elegance of the 
building. 

Janeway’s private office had the advantage of a 
comer facing the lake on two sides, and of profiting 
by the sun and the lake breezes. The room itself 
reflected the surroundings of a successful corporation 
lawyer. The doors and trim were mahogany, the 
walls beige, and the Mauresque mg green. The fur¬ 
nishings were simple. In the centre of the room— 
which was large—and facing the door stood a sub¬ 
stantial and commodious mahogany table. Above 
the fireplace hung autographed portraits of two ex- 

93 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


94 

Presidents; a portrait of the Chief Justice of the 
United States, autographed, hung between them. 
Against an inner wall stood a simple bookcase, filled 
not with law-books, but with books that had been 
read and given a place of honor higher than one in 
the general library or in the law libraries of the 
outer offices. Janeway was one of those professional 
men that know books and talk books that are out¬ 
side their professional reading-ground. They talk 
them to their friends and clients. They thus make 
the source of pleasure they derive from general read¬ 
ing an asset in their business equipment. For to 
know or seem to know what the world is talking and 
reading about is, among successful American busi¬ 
ness men, an asset. 

On the table lay a leather-covered blotting-pad. 
A telephone, a buzzer, an ink-well, and a slender sil¬ 
ver rose vase, without a rose, comprised the rest of 
the table furnishings. Janeway’s revolving chair, at 
the back of the table, stood at an angle to the two 
office entrances—one from a private corridor, the 
other from the outside offices. Three other chairs, 
available for conference, were placed against the 
walls. The effect of the room was one of coldness 
and formality, and its aspect was in tone with the 
spirit of its deliberations. 

On the first morning in June, Kennedy, standing 
at the table and alone in the room, was laying Jane- 
way’s mail, opened,'Together with files of newspaper 
clippings, on the table, when the outer office door 
opened and Gertrude Durand came in, closing the 


THREE YEARS AFTER 


95 

door hastily behind her. Gertrude, in a white cor¬ 
duroy suit, with a black sport hat, looked very pros¬ 
perous, but a little upset; her excitement showed in 
her wide-open eyes and the heightened color of her 
cheeks. She hastened to Kennedy, exclaiming“ Oh, 
Jim!” 

Kennedy, never seriously disturbed, promptly 
kissed her, and pausing with the letters he was dis¬ 
tributing, spoke calmly. “Has your cook struck, 
honey? What got you up so early?” 

“Have you seen the morning papers, about the 
fight at the meeting last night?” 

He pointed. “The stuff’s all here.” 

“After what’s happened,” declared Gertrude,“Mr. 
Janeway and Bob are certain to quarrel.” 

“Make no mistake,” returned Kennedy, with 
poise. “Mr. Janeway and Big Brother have quar¬ 
relled. At ten minutes past ten o’clock last night, 
to be precise, I placed Mr. Janeway’s resignation as 
counsel for the Durand interests in Robert’s hands— 
and let me tell you he was full angry when he read 
it—with Simms and with me and Janeway and 
everybody else.” 

“And Mr. Janeway,” said Gertrude, still looking 
wide-eyed at her fiance, “had more influence with 
Bob than any man living.” 

“Always and honorably excepting Mrs. Maymie 
Montgomery, baby.” 

“But she’s not a man.” 

“Sometimes I think she is; sometimes I think she 
isn’t. I read once about a Frenchman, who, by 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


9 6 

usurping the privileges of the opposite sex, inspired. 
some doubt concerning his own. Maybe Maymie’s 
doing things in disguise.” 

“But for us to lose Mr. Janeway now-” 

“We haven’t lost Mr. Janeway. Far from it.” * 

“But he has lost his influence with Bob-” 

“Wrong again. The head of the Durand Steel 
Corporation will pay even more attention to what 
Henry Janeway says as an enemy than he would as 
a friend. Brother Bob is afraid of Janeway. I hate 
to say it of as big a figure as our own Brother—for 
he’s my brother as well as yours, Trudie—he can’t 
lose me” insisted Kennedy. “I’m going to marry 
you. I promised my mother I would, and I’m going 
to keep my word.” 

“Stop your everlasting nonsense, and' tell me 
about this fight. What did happen ? ” 

Kennedy adjusted himself to the recital with the 
precision of a careful man in telling a story to a 
woman—a precision meant to forestall unnecessary 
questions. “What did happen,” said he, “was only 
this. The Merchants’ Association called a citizens’ 
meeting last night to consider means to avert ‘our’ 
strike. Brother, they claim, won’t listen to reason, 
and the strike, you might say, is on right now. 
Bishop Marion was asked by the Merchants’ Asso¬ 
ciation to preside at this meeting. The men agreed; 
Simms was asked; he agreed to it. He was strong 
for the Bishop as a peacemaker, and appealed per¬ 
sonally to the Bishop to act. 

“But the Bishop was suspicious of Simms and 





THREE YEARS AFTER 


97 

his overtures. He wouldn’t promise. So Simms 
and Brother coaxed Janeway to ask the Bishop, 
which he did—and the Bishop consented. But after 
it was all settled, Simms found the Bishop was out 
for three shifts and eight hours—while ‘we/ are for 
two shifts and twelve hours, so Brother made up his 
mind to trim Mr. Bishop. He asked Janeway to go 
to the meeting. Janeway didn’t fancy the idea, and 
didn’t hesitate to say so, but he finally agreed to go. 
Because he’s pretty well liked, Brother wanted him 
to represent the corporation and say a word for the 
company side, see? 

“So Mr. Janeway went. But Brother also told 
Simms to be at the meeting with a bunch of strong- 
arm men, and told him to see that the meeting went 
‘our’ way.” 

Gertrude uttered an exclamation. 

“When the Bishop was nominated for chairman, 
Simms reneged. He bobbed up and nominated a 
stool-pigeon of his own. He made a speech and got 
a laugh going—among the strong-arms. The Bishop 
then proposed to withdraw in favor of Simms’s man. 
The Merchants voted Simms down and put in the 
Bishop. When Simms saw the talk was going against 
the company, he began to row. He’d had a pretty 
good dinner, anyway. Pretty soon his men started 
to break up the meeting—they were half full, that’s 
about the size of it. Now some say Janeway was in 
the hall when it happened, some say he came in just 
about the time Simms’s men started to rush the 
Bishop. They claim Simms told ’em to; this morn- 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


98 

ing, according to The Tribune , he ‘ indignantly ’ de¬ 
nies it. Anyway, they tried to urge the Bishop on 
a fox-trot through a second-story window, and it 
started the biggest row ever pulled in Fond du Lac 
since the night Jimmie Gentry threw the bantam 
fight at the armory.” 

Gertrude followed the recital with bated breath. 
“Then what?” she asked, as Kennedy paused. 

“Well, when Henry Janeway got to the Bishop 
and got a chair into action, the Bishop withdrew in 
good order to his second line. Then some of the 
rolling-mill men got into the hall and went at Simms’s 
strong-arms. A dozen or so huskies got mussed up 
pretty bad. That’s all there was to it.” 

Gertrude drew a breath. “Great heavens, it’s 
enough! It means a terrible break between Bob 
and Janeway.” 

“It certainly looks as if Brother had spilled the 
beans.” 

“Without Mr. Janeway I’ll never get Bob’s con¬ 
sent to marry you,” said Gertrude gloomily. 

Kennedy regarded her quietly. “I had to go to 
France, didn’t I ? I promised Brother if I got killed 
I wouldn’t marry you. But I didn’t promise him I 
would get killed. I’m back four months now, and 
we’re going to get married, quarrel or no quarrel, 
strike or no strike, Brother or no Brother. There’s 
nothing else to it.” 

The corridor door, responding to the action of a 
pass-key, opened, and Janeway walked into the 
room. His eyes lighted at the sight of Gertrude. 


» 


THREE YEARS AFTER 


99 

Three years had changed him little. He carried him¬ 
self as stiffly as ever, and in the variations of the 
years had lost nothing of his positive air—an air 
that now rarely disappeared completely, even when 
pleading before a court. His expression was usually 
one of indifference and preoccupation, and at thirty- 
eight he was only somewhat worse than at thirty- 
five. 

Yet Janeway understood courtesy, and when he 
had a mind to do so, could extend it. Always care¬ 
fully dressed, for business reasons as well as from 
choice, he was of the type of men that are described 
as hard on their clothes, and on this morning his 
tweed suit, with its soft roll sack coat, showed he 
had forgotten to lay it aside. 

“Mr. Janeway!” exclaimed Gertrude. “Jim’s 
been telling me about the fight last night. Why, it 
must have been awful!” 

Janeway laughed. Kennedy took his hat. 
“Thank you, Jim. Why, Gertrude”—he turned 
toward her with little concern—“there was nothing 
to it.” 

“But the newspapers!” 

“Never believe the newspapers. Did they tell 
you,” asked Janeway, “that Jim saved my life and 
covered our retreat?” 

Gertrude looked at Kennedy in amazement. 
“You never even told me you were there! Jim 
Kennedy, you can explain this evening.” 

“There was no retreat to cover, believe me, Tru- 
die,” returned Kennedy. “It was as fast going for 


IOO 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


three minutes as you’d want to see; but when Simms’s 
death battalion broke, it was a debacle.” 

“Jim,” interposed Janeway, “is a blood relative 
of the Irishman that saw a fight in the corner of a 
saloon, and asked whether it was a private affair, or 
if anybody might mix in. Sit down, Gertrude.” 

“I can’t stay.” 

“You must. And you must excuse me just long 
enough to write a short note.” 

Kennedy was attentive. “ Shall I send Miss Blen- 
kiron, Mr. Janeway?” he asked, providing a chair 
for Gertrude. 

“I’ll write this myself,” said Janeway, seating 
himself. 

He reached for note-paper, which Kennedy placed 
near his hand. While writing in a deliberate and 
somewhat awkward fashion, he spoke to Gertrude. 
“How’s your baby club coming on?” 

“The Day Nursery? Perfectly fine—the only 
trouble is to find babies for it. I suppose,” she 
added ruefully, “their mothers hate to trust them 
with any institution a Durand’s connected with. 
I’m interrupting your note,” she said as Janeway 
paused. 

“This is not important—only a little surprise for 
your brother, Bob. Not much of a surprise, either, 
I guess,” he added. 

“Well, / have a surprise for him, this morning,” 
remarked Gertrude, with an air of importance. 

“Jim,” said Janeway, folding and enclosing his 
note, “I want this to go up-stairs now, to Mr. Du- 



THREE YEARS AFTER 


IOI 


rand’s office. Don’t send it; take it yourself. If 
he’s there, hand it to him yourself. If he’s not, give 
it to his secretary to be delivered, without fail, when 
he comes in. Did you get Simms?” 

“I did. He said he’d be here by temthirty; it’s 
nearly that now.” 

Kennedy left with the note. Janeway turned to 
Gertrude. “ Now for your surprise for your brother. 
I hope it’s not that you’re going to break your en¬ 
gagement and didn’t want Jim to hear about it?” 

Gertrude liked Janeway when he threw off serious¬ 
ness. “Don’t ever believe that” she laughed. 

“What is it, then?” 

“Louise is back.” 

With these simple words Gertrude achieved an 
unlooked-for effect. Janeway, a man under pretty 
good control, and on familiar terms with alarum, 
straightened perceptibly. “What do you mean?” 
he asked, almost involuntarily. 

“Just what I say.” 

“ Mrs. Durand here ? ” She heard in his dry, hard 
tone the effect of her news. “In Fond du Lac?” 
he asked, almost irritably. “When did she come?” 

“Just last night. And had to come in the midst 
of this riot!” 

Janeway regarded his informant as he would a 
witness. ‘ ‘ Where is she from ? ’ ’ 

“Paris.” 

“You hadn’t heard from her for a long time?” 

“Not for months. Nobody had heard from her— 
not even her brother, George—not the bank.” 



102 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


His eyes, which had regarded her searchingly, 
were almost half closed a moment under his stub¬ 
born brows. Then he looked suddenly up. “ Where 
is she staying—not in her own house?” 

“With me.” 

Each question, coming slowly, seemed as if just 
occurring to his mind. “She’s well?” 

“Quite.” 

“Changed?” 

“No—though I don’t know that I should say 
that , either,” added Gertrude, correcting herself. 
“ She’s just the same, yet in some way she’s different. 
I can’t say just exactly how,” she went on, per¬ 
plexed, “but”—Gertrude sustained the inflection an 
instant—“she has changed a little.” 

“The war and her contact with it would account 
for that,” hazarded Janeway. “The war changed 
everybody,” he added dogmatically. “All of us. 
Even those who opposed it the most—nobody 
escaped. But if the war has changed Mrs. Du¬ 
rand”—he went on, with his usual bluntness—“it 
must be for worse. It could hardly be for better.” 

“I’m glad to hear you stand up for her,” said Ger¬ 
trude stoutly. “Bob has treated her shamefully. 
And she’s worried to death now over his divorce 
suit; that’s one reason why I came this morning to 
see you, Mr. Janeway. If she knew, she wouldn’t 
approve of my speaking to you at all. But I just 
know you want her to have fair play—just as I want 
her to.” 

Janeway regarded Gertrude’s resolute air with 


THREE YEARS AFTER 


103 

contemplative interest. “ You’re not afraid of any¬ 
body, are you?” 

“ Uncle Sid probably told you that. Well, this is 
what I want to say: She’s going to consult some 
lawyer—some one to protect her interests.” 

“Why, Simms engaged old Mr. Johnson to repre¬ 
sent her.” 

“But that poor man is doddering!” 

“Mr. Johnson”—Janeway paused drily—“is cer¬ 
tainly no longer aggressive.” 

“Whom can she consult?” asked Gertrude anx¬ 
iously. “I don’t know, of course; and I asked Jim, 
and he said he’d talk it over with you. But there’s 
no time to lose.” 

Janeway paused again. “Advise her not to con¬ 
sult any one,” he said at length; “at least, not to¬ 
day. Her interests wall not suffer. Tell her I say 
so, and assure her I’ll be responsible for what I 
say.” 

Gertrude rose, relieved. “Then I ought to see 
her before she goes out this morning.” 

“Do,” assented Janeway, rising in turn. A file 
clerk opened the office door. 

“Mr. Simms, Mr. Janeway.” 

“He may come in.” Janeway, walking after Ger¬ 
trude, opened the corridor door. They encountered 
Kennedy returning from up-stairs. “Did you de¬ 
liver the note?” asked Janeway. 

“Mr. Durand hadn’t come in. I gave it to his 
secretary.” 

“Will you intercept Mrs. Durand and tell her 


104 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

what I said?” asked Janeway, turning to Gertrude. 

“If I’m not too late.” 

“Don’t be too late,” he urged peremptorily. “I’ll 
call on you both this afternoon.” 

“About what time?” 

“Say four o’clock.” 

He was back at his table when Simms walked in. 
Simms, past forty, was portly, tall, and muscular, 
with the jocular manner known to American business 
men as that of a “mixer.” Usually alert and volu¬ 
ble in utterance, He was a man with a wide circle 
of those acquaintances not properly termed friends. 
His utterance was jerky. He wore a soft black hat 
of the sort affected by congressional statesmen and 
country lawyers, and as a reinforcement to profes¬ 
sional dignity, a double-breasted frock coat, the tails 
of which bobbed with his brisk steps. His face and 
brown eyes bore traces of whiskey—though not 
much—and a closely trimmed mustache gave his 
mouth a cropped appearance. 

He tossed his hat and laid his cane on the table, 
and greeted Janeway with a laugh, harsh but 
unctuous. 

“Well, Henry, you played the devil last night; 
you certainly did. And you can do it. Seen Du¬ 
rand this morning?” 

Janeway’s response was of an indifferent sort. 
“Not yet. Sit down.” 

“Kennedy telephoned you wanted to talk to me. 
About the riot, eh?” Simms broke into a laugh. 

“No,” said Janeway, cutting him off almost im- 



THREE YEARS AFTER 105 

patiently. “It’s about this divorce suit of Du¬ 
rand’s.” 

“Well, what about it?” asked Simms briskly. 
There was a note of suspicion in his tone and man¬ 
ner. 

“I spoke to you yesterday,” said Janeway, “about 
the unpleasant allegations in his bill—allegations 
that were not only unnecessary but bad for public 
effect and of a nature to reflect on Mrs. Durand—- 
her cruelty, for example; her absenting herself from 
her home—neglecting it. Why drag that bunk into 
it?” Janeway sat back in his chair with his head 
inclined forward; his chin rested on the bow of his 
cravat. He thus regarded Simms from under over¬ 
hanging eyebrows, and spoke in a manner indicating 
not alone that the subject was distasteful, but that 
he was very angry. 

“Have you substituted me out of the case?” he 
demanded shortly. 

“Not yet, Janeway. You only asked me to yes¬ 
terday afternoon. I told Durand last night you had 
made such a demand. I’ll attend to it.” 

Simms was ready for an encounter. Naturally 
afraid of Janeway, whose influence as the chief legal 
reliance of Durand he feared, Simms had now re¬ 
membrance of the events of the evening before to 
embolden him; and though without knowledge of the 
resignation, he felt that he knew what Janeway’s 
conduct must precipitate. “Look here,” he con¬ 
tinued, with just enough pause to stiffen his utter¬ 
ance, “can I ask you a fair question?” 




io6 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“You might try/’ suggested Janeway, in a con¬ 
temptuous utterance. 

Simms was too intent on the matter in hand to 
take notice of the retort. 

“Doesn’t it look almighty queer for you”—Simms 
went on—“Durand’s own lawyer as much as I 
am —” 

Janeway broke in with delicate shading: “Not 
quite as much.” 

Simms pushed,harder. “For you, his own gen¬ 
eral counsel, to be calling me down, his personal 
attorney, on a bill that I file for his divorce ? Say! ” 

Janeway showed no impatience. “I don’t feel I 
can have an unfair bill railroaded through against 
Mrs. Durand. And what’s flat.” he added, with cat¬ 
tish emphasis, “I won’t.” 

Simms brought fresh energy into play. “Hell’s 
delight, man! Hasn’t Johnson got the case in hand 
for Mrs. Durand? Wasn’t Mrs. Durand consulted 
about it—notified by Johnson the bill had been filed, 
and didn’t she cable him to look out for her inter¬ 
ests?” 

Janeway shrugged his shoulders. “Johnson is a 
cipher. You know that. And you rigged his ap¬ 
pointment.” 

“Rigged it! On her cabled assent? Janeway, I 
don’t understand you!” 

Janeway became increasingly contemptuous. “I 
understand you—that’s enough. Mrs. Durand is 
not to be slandered in a bill brought by you or any 
one else. She is entitled to respectful treatment 



THREE YEARS AFTER 


107 

at the hands of every one—including her own hus¬ 
band. ” 

“She refused to live with him, didn’t she, when 
she went to Europe?” 

“Would you live with him?” 

Simms coughed. “Hem—er—I’m not on the wit¬ 
ness-stand, am I, Janeway?” 

“You’re not making a stump speech, either. 
What’s the present status of this suit?” 

Simms seemed both placated and placating. “The 
decree will be entered this morning.” 

“What sum has been named for her in the settle¬ 
ment?” 

Simms, as if scenting objection, adopted a frank 
and manly tone. “I had quite a time,” he began, 
“bringing Durand around to a suitable figure.” 

“I told him, myself, at the time he asked me, what 
he ought to do,” interposed Janeway, with no effort 
to conceal his impatience, if not disgust. 

Simms hastened on as if aware there were rapids 
to shoot. “I know that; I know it. But he kicked 
when it came up, Henry; he certainly kicked.” 

“Name the sum.” 

“Well—er—in addition to the large amount rep¬ 
resenting her estate from her father—you asked, 
you know, to have that fixed after negotiation with 
Fargo—Durand now adds the further sum of fifty 
thousand dollars.” 

“Fifty thousand dollars!” Janeway jumped in 
his chair. His face grew dark as it flushed, and his 
unruly hair flopped forward. ‘ ‘ What do you mean ? ’ ’ 




108 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

he demanded explosively. “She should have ten 
times that.” 

Simms was not unused to outbreaks against injus¬ 
tice. “Easy, easy! Why get excited? Why-” 

Jane way, standing over his table, pressed the 
buzzer angrily. “ Of all the contemptible things that 
scoundrel has been guilty of!” 

Simms sat down, not unhappy over the outbreak. 
Kennedy opened the office door. Janeway was as 
cold and cracky as ice again, but Kennedy knew his 
turns so well that'he saw his anger. “Kennedy!” 
he snapped, “You said Durand had made me an 
attorney of record in this Durand-Durand case?” 

“I did, Mr. Janeway.” 

“Get Judge Bellows on the ’phone before court 
opens,” Janeway went on. “Ask him to take no 
further action in the case until I can see him. Re¬ 
port to me, please, Kennedy.” 

“Yes, Mr. Janeway. Bishop Marion is in the 
office.” 

“Show him in,” directed Janeway instantly. 

Simms looked alarmed, being in no wise minded 
to encounter the Bishop. He rose and stood in front 
of the table. “It isn’t enough; I know that; but 
you know what kind of a man Bob is to handle.” 

“He’ll mend his ways before he gets what he 
wants in this case.” 

“And look here, Henry.” Simms leaned forward 
in friendly fashion. “Durand is coming in here this 
morning. There’ll be pretty hard words flying. 
Don’t say anything to hurt me with Durand. Noth¬ 
ing about any—er—old matters, eh?” 




THREE YEARS AFTER 


109 

Janeway gave assurance indifferently. “ You need 
feel no uneasiness.” 

But Simms was really solicitous. “ Honor bright ? ” 

“Are you afraid of my word?” asked Janeway 
sharply. 

“No, no. No, no. Your word’s enough. Well! ” 
Simms laughed sardonically. “Things are mixed; 
they’re pretty well mixed! Happy days!” And 
picking up his hat and stick, he walked quickly to 
the corridor door and was gone. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE QUARREL 

Bishop Marion came toward Janeway half laughing, 
and with a questioning expression, as one might 
greet another after a mutual shock. 

“Mr. Janeway, you have put me very much in 
your debt,” declared the Bishop. 

Janeway regarded him gravely. “I hope you are 
not given to sarcasm, Bishop?” 

“Sarcasm?” echoed Bishop Marion, in surprise. 

“Never,” exclaimed Janeway, cutting off the 
Bishop’s further words, and speaking in wrathful 
emphasis, “have I been so humiliated as I was by 
the deception practised on me last night—and on 
you. I hope you believed my assurances-” 

Bishop Marion only laughed, pointing to himself. 
“Isn’t my presence excellent evidence of that? I 
came precisely to tell you that I needed no assurance 
of your entire good faith in the circumstances, and, I 
repeat, I am in your debt.” 

Janeway, regarding his visitor closely, showed that 
he felt more at ease. “I can’t explain it,” he said, 
in lighter vein. “No doubt I ought to be ashamed 
to admit it. But I love a riot—especially in a room 
where there are a few things loose. That kind of a 
situation affords the closest chance to an honest ex- 


IIO 




Ill 


THE QUARREL 

pression of opinion that a corporation lawyer ever 
gets.” Janeway waved his hand to a chair. “Be 
seated, Bishop.” 

“My bones aren’t of great value,” continued 
Bishop Marion, sitting in the chair Simms had just 
left, “but when men desert me after having urged 
me into a mess—to have you come to my rescue as 
you did last night with a good right-and-left-” 

“Pardon, Bishop,” interposed Janeway. “Honor 
to whom honor is due—it was a chair.” 

“But I feared that last night’s affair might be 
your undoing,” the Bishop went on, more seriously, 
“so I came this morning to proffer my poor friend¬ 
ship and poorer counsel. I even thought I might 
myself go to Mr. Durand and tell him how badly 
his real interests are being managed in this trouble 
with the men—tell him the truth.” 

Janeway, contained, indulged his vein of contemp¬ 
tuous irony. “Why tell the truth, Bishop? Why 
tell the truth when you know it is always an injury 
to society ? Constant annoyances are caused by the 
obstinacy of people in telling the truth.” 

“What should you tell—lies?” asked the Bishop, 
with a patient smile. 

“Not at all,” returned Janeway blandly. “Tell 
what ought to be the truth—tell that which prevails, 
that which is accepted among our best people, our 
thinkers, our educators, our men of letters, as the 
truth. Why try all the time, or any of the time, to 
overturn veridical conventions—why stir things 
up?” 




112 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Particularly/’ assented the Bishop, amused, “ if— 
as is usually the case nowadays—the stick you stir 
with is no closer to the truth than the conventions 
you disturb.” 

“The truth,” continued Janeway, “is like the 
news. No newspaper gives you the news; it gives 
you what the proprietor thinks you need for news. 
Of course,” he added, “I wouldn’t for one moment 
assume to say what you should or should not do, 
about seeing Durand. But so far as concerns my- 
self, I may say—very frankly—that you need not 
give what happened last night a thought. It could 
not possibly in any way be, as you express it, my un¬ 
doing. But quite aside from that, I really shouldn’t 
attempt, if I were you, to see Mr. Durand; you would 
only expose yourself to insult. He is very bitter 
against you. The roots of what you fear may be 
my undoing go far back of last night’s events. 

“Some time ago I signed a pardon application 
for one of our convicted dynamiters. He was guilty 
enough, but without the vicious character of the 
other three fellows, who used him as a tool. And 
the doctors said recently he was dying of tuber¬ 
culosis. 

“His wife had been haunting me for months; she 
said my signature would carry her petition. Once 
she brought the three children along—all little tots 
—darned and mended to the last stitch, and scrupu¬ 
lously clean; she’s a good woman—a victim of the 
sins of others. I always refused her, but she always 
came back. Kennedy, I suspect, abetted her—the 



THE QUARREL 113 

fellow has a sneaking pity for the forlorn; and I 
knew he was in it, for she never appeared at inoppor¬ 
tune moments—never when I was ill-tempered or 
under pressure. And there never were any demon¬ 
strations at my refusals; no tears, very few words 
at any time, just a mute appeal of the eyes; and 
when I said ‘No/ silent departure. If she’d quar¬ 
relled with me it would have made it easier to turn 
her down. 

“Finally, to be rid of her, I laid down what I 
thought an impossible condition. ‘If you’ll bring 
me your husband’s written confession of his part in 
the affair and it strikes me as the truth, I’ll sign 
your application.’ 

“She went away downhearted. But in a week 
she was back. What won’t a woman do for love of 
a man! She had been to the penitentiary herself, 
coaxed the truth from her husband—think of how 
she must have pleaded!—written it down herself— 
and it was beautifully written—and placed it in my 
hands—only asking that I make no public use of it. 

“I read the story, handed it back to her, asked 
her for her petition, and signed it. Through our 
traffic department I then arranged transportation 
for the whole family to Arizona. 

“After all those months, those pitiful failures, 
those constant rebuffs, she never broke till that mo¬ 
ment. I was never so upset in my life. She caught 
my hands, dropped on her knees and kissed them in 
a frenzy of tears.” 

“When the end comes, Mr. Janeway,” said the 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


114 

Bishop simply, “that is a moment that should con¬ 
sole you.” 

“It doesn’t console me just now,” continued Jane¬ 
way. “I keep thinking I may have held out too 
long; I worry for fear the cuss will die. Not that I 
care for him—but that would make her victory a 
barren one. ‘Now, go to it,’ I said to her rather 
shamefacedly. ‘Beat the doctors if you can.’ 

“You’d hardly believe it, but Durand was vio¬ 
lently angry with me for signing that petition. He 
got it all from the newspapers, of course. It was 
our first open rupture. I took the position that the 
responsibility was purely mine; I had secured the 
man’s conviction. Every one concerned felt that 
justice had been satisfied in the fellow’s case; I was 
the last man holding out. I made no apologies to 
Durand; in fact, I talked pretty sharp to him for 
abusing me. It was a minor incident, but it only 
showed he and I never could get along.” 

“I knew a little of that case,” said Bishop Marion, 
“together,” he added, “with certain incidents you 
have not recounted. She told me of the check you 
gave her to ‘get her on her feet,’ as you expressed 
it, in Arizona. It was that that broke her down. 
And why,” said the Bishop again, “shouldn’t I con¬ 
fess that there was, besides Kennedy, a further 
conspirator in her persistence in dogging your steps ? 
I am afraid it was Kennedy and I together who 
told her that if she would be patient —you would 
not ultimately refuse her.” 

Janeway, laughing rather cynically, tossed his 


THE QUARREL 115 

head. “ Wheels within wheels; conspiracies on every 
hand,” he remarked, slowing down. “ And we think, 
each of us, that nobody fools us!” 

“This unhappy man,” continued the Bishop, “was 
one of my own stray sheep—not of my immediate 
flock, for, of course, strangers are sent in to do jobs 
such as that. But he was, or should have been, a 
Catholic, and his poor wife is an exemplary one. 
She came here to Fond du Lac during his trial and 
has lived here ever since, supporting herself and her 
children by doing washing.” 

Something in the Bishop’s words woke Janeway 
up. He looked suddenly at his visitor and pointed 
his finger at him. “Tell me, Bishop Marion, do 
you and your fellow bishops feel no culpability 
in not advocating your own labor-unions for your 
working men? Don’t you to-day, in effect, force 
your own men—in order to protect themselves from 
capitalistic greed—to join unions where there is care 
neither for God nor man?—unions infested with 
thugs and teeming with extortioners and murderers, 
as American labor-unions are to-day ? Doesn’t every 
criminal act of remorseless union-labor villainy point 
its finger at the shepherds who virtually condemn 
their sheep to such associations? You warn your 
people to beware of evil communications, and prac¬ 
tically condemn your Christian working-man to take 
hands with villainy and crime.” 

“My dear Mr. Janeway,” returned the Bishop, 
unhesitatingly, “your views and mine are too closely 
alike on that subject to leave room for discussion. 


ii 6 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Some day a Ketteler will arise among us to tackle 
that problem—along with our many others.” 

“My difficulties with Mr. Durand,” continued 
Janeway, reverting in composed fashion to the sub¬ 
ject of the Bishop’s solicitude, “really originate in a 
fundamental difference of opinion concerning the la¬ 
bor policy of the corporation—a difference in prin¬ 
ciple—which, as you know, is always a serious mat¬ 
ter. Have you ever noticed,” he continued, as if 
for a moment digressing, “that radical men grow 
more conservative as they grow older? And that 
conservative men, being older, grow more radical ? 

“ I think something like that has happened to me,” 
Janeway went on, without giving chance for answer. 
“I grew up on Adam Smith and Bentham and the 
laissez-faire school of political economists. But I’ve 
left them.” 

“And where are you now?” asked the Bishop. 

Janeway did not even shrug his shoulders. “No¬ 
where,” he said, with contempt in his tone. 

“Like too many others, I fear,” returned the 
Bishop. 

“But I do,” resumed Janeway, with characteristic 
decision, “recognize in your Church—though far 
from my ken—a real constructive element of the 
only civilized society we know by experience any¬ 
thing about—our own. I recognize in it—as many 
thinking men do—a bulwark of social order. I don’t 
mean Mark Hanna’s social policeman—I mean a 
counter-check, a poise, a pretty good code to back 
up against. And if Christianity with a voice of 



THE QUARREL 117 

authority can’t step in between capitalistic hogs like 
Durand and corrupt labor leaders such as we are 
cursed with nowadays, we may as well give up our 
ideas of civilization and all go to making bombs. 
In the social warfare of to-day there’s no half-way 
between Christianity and dynamite.” 

Bishop Marion listened attentively. “ Newman 
once said,” he remarked, “that if men would define 
their terms, discussion would cease. But it would 
put you too far afield to ask you to define Chris¬ 
tianity. There’s another thing about you that puz¬ 
zles me,” he observed. Janeway only looked at him. 
“To the prosperous man whatever is, is right; to the 
unfortunate man whatever is, is wrong. You puzzle 
me a little, because my rule doesn’t quite work with 
you.” 

The office door opened. A clerk stepped into the 
room. “Mr. Durand, Mr. Janeway.” 

“I’ll see him presently,” snapped Janeway. 

The clerk, as if not knowing whether to say more, 
paused doubtfully. “He seems somewhat in a 
hurry,” he ventured. 

“He usually does,” returned Janeway, unmoved. 
“What’s your haste?” he asked, with a suspicion of 
impatience, as the clerk retired and Bishop Mar¬ 
ion rose. “There’s not the slightest reason for 
any.” 

“He shouldn’t meet me here,” said the Bishop 
seriously. “If what you tell me is correct, it would 
only get you into more trouble.” 

Janeway laughed. ‘ ‘ There the question of ‘ terms ’ 


n8 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


bobs up again! But in point of fact, nothing could 
get me into more ‘trouble.’ Sit down, do.” 

“No,” returned the Bishop, resolved to with¬ 
draw, “I have really said all I have to say; except, 
perhaps,” he added, and he paused with a question¬ 
ing expression as he regarded the lawyer, “to 
ask-” 

“Go ahead,” said Janeway. 

“Why men like you, while professing to admire 
Christianity, stand so comfortably aloof from it?” 
The Bishop was'retreating toward the corridor door. 

“By my word!” exclaimed Janeway, signalling 
with the buzzer for Durand’s admittance, and follow¬ 
ing Bishop Marion in a leisurely manner. “I hardly 
expected, so soon after the episode of the chair, to 
be accused of standing aloof from Christianity!” 

“You know what I mean,” returned Bishop 
Marion, in like vein, “and it applies, Mr. Janeway, 
to men like you !” 

“I suppose,” responded Janeway lazily, “I’m like 
the man that was hard up. His minister complained 
he ought to be doing something for religion. ‘ It’s a 
debt you owe the Lord,’ he urged. ‘I know it,’ ad¬ 
mitted the man. ‘I’d like to do something. But 
the Lord isn’t pressing me as hard as the rest of my 
creditors.’” 

Robert Durand flung open the office door. In his 
keen glance at both men he made no effort to conceal 
his hostile attitude. 

“Interrupting your conference, I’m afraid,” he 
said harshly. 



THE QUARREL 119 

Janeway stood quite unruffled. “It is closed.” 

Durand, evidently laboring under pent-up wrath, 
glared at the Bishop. “I congratulate you on secur¬ 
ing the co-operation of Mr. Jane way in your efforts 
to make trouble among my men.” 

The challenge could hardly be ignored; indeed, 
Bishop Marion made no effort to ignore it, though 
he spoke without feeling. “Much as I prize Mr. 
Jane way’s good-will, I must say I need yours even 
more, Mr. Durand, in any effort, not to make trouble 
among your men, but to avert industrial warfare in 
this community.” 

“What I hate to see, in any kind of a fight, is 
hypocrisy,” said Durand, under control, but biting 
off his words with emphasis. “You agitate under 
the lying pretense that your own people are affected. 
Less than one-third of our men, by actual count, 
belong to your church.” 

“They all belong to humanity, to God. They are 
men with wives, children, souls.” 

“All possible dupes and supporters for fat priests 
who won’t work themselves.” 

The Bishop eyed his accuser calmly until he had 
done speaking; then he regarded rather deprecatingly 
his own lean proportions. “Perhaps I deserve no 
credit for not being fat; I am personally somewhat 
the victim of a faulty assimilation. But what would 
it really avail me, Mr. Durand, to retort in kind, and 
speak of fat dividends and the scandalous profiteer¬ 
ing of the last three years? My fight, if you deem 
it such, against working men twelve hours a day and 


120 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


seven days a week is the fight of humanity as well 
as of Christianity. Your methods breed human 
hyenas. And if you don’t lift them above their 
ferocity, they will one day tear you and your class 
limb from limb. It is men like you,” said the 
Bishop, without either haste or undue feeling, “as 
well as other men—that Christianity strives to pro¬ 
tect from the certain consequences of their own 
folly.” 

“And this,” remarked Durand, looking at Jane¬ 
way as the Bishop passed through the door and 
closed it behind him, “is the sort of Socialistic elo¬ 
quence that finds sympathy with a man who draws 
fifty thousand dollars a year-” 

“My salary,” retorted Janeway, “paid by the 
corporation of which you are president, was fixed 
at your suggestion—not at mine. And remember— 
you came to me—not I to you.” 

“—who draws fifty thousand a year to look after 
my legal interests,” persisted Durand bitterly. 

“But not one dollar to look after your illegal or 
inhuman interests,” interrupted Janeway evenly. 

“Fine discrimination,” commented Durand, not 
repressing his sneer. 

“Fine discrimination,” returned Janeway com¬ 
posedly, “keeps many capitalists out of the peni¬ 
tentiary.” 

Durand had ample reason to know that his counsel 
was a difficult antagonist in such an encounter as he 
was persisting in, but his anger made him reckless. 
“It’s time for you and me to have an understand- 





121 


THE QUARREL 

ing,” he blurted out. The very realization of his 
helplessness at Janeway’s hands enraged him the 
more; he was like a bull faced by a toreador. 

“I agree with you,” returned Janeway. 

“Men on the staff of the corporation,” said Du¬ 
rand, regaining, with the hackneyed pronouncement, 
something of his dignity and pompousness, “may 
honestly differ with me in my policies. But I will 
have strict loyalty from them, or their resignations.” 

“My resignation was placed in your hands last 
night. And it has been there before, you know,” 
added Janeway. 

“This is the second time you’ve played traitor to 
me.” 

“I think it’s the third,” said Janeway. “The 
first was when you asked me to help send Simms to 
the United States Senate.” 

“You refused a year ago to get my divorce for me.” 

“Getting a divorce, tainted with fraud, for the 
President is no part of the duties of the general 
counsel of the Durand Steel Corporation.” 

Durand burst into a rage. “General counsel of 
hell and damnation-” 

“Something like that,” interposed Janeway. 

“When you refer to my divorce bill as tainted 
with fraud, you say what is absolutely false.” 

Janeway regarded him with a more malevolent 
look than had heretofore entered his eyes. “Were 
I your wife’s advocate,” he said, “I should correct 
you even on that point. No fraud?” he echoed, 
stirred by Durand’s denial. “ No fraud ? You signed 



122 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


my name to this complaint as attorney, making me 
in effect party to your contemptible charges.” 

“You were my attorney!” roared Durand. 

Janeway almost rose in his chair. “Not your 
attorney; never your attorney. I told you that a 
year ago. You had no right to join me as your at¬ 
torney without my consent. You had no right to 
file with my name on it a complaint I never saw. 
Fraud?” repeated Janeway with stinging emphasis, 
“your hands are„dripping with fraud ! I warn you, 
Durand, in so far as you have attempted to mix 
me in it, this injustice to your wife shall be righted.” 

Durand, too angry for prudence, kept on. “If it 
wasn’t too late,” he almost shouted, “I’ll guarantee 
you’d take her case against me.” The retort that 
it might not be too late was on Janeway’s lips, 
but he suppressed it. Durand, mistaking his silence, 
blundered ahead. “It wouldn’t surprise me, if 
after acting as my legal adviser, you’d stoop to any¬ 
thing.” 

“Since you mention it,” agreed Janeway, looking 
coolly out of the window, “it wouldn’t greatly sur¬ 
prise me, either.” 

“A man,” exclaimed Durand, “that will take from 
me fifty thousand a year, and get up as you did last 
night, in a public meeting, and defend this meddling 
Bishop—the worst agitator in Fond du Lac—a man 
that’s a traitor under cover to every legitimate busi¬ 
ness enterprise in this town—why, I wouldn’t call 
myself a man to do it!” 

Cumulative abuse, even if stupid, sometimes bores 


THE QUARREL 123 

into an antagonist. Janeway’s eyes lighted again 
with anger. “ Don’t call yourself a man, Durand!” 
he said, pounding in his words with his heavy voice. 
“It would spoil the one word that decency may 
still lay claim to! Before you agreed to this meet¬ 
ing, you asked my advice. I warned you what was 
coming. I told you I’d never defend a twelve-hour 
day, seven days a week. You followed other coun¬ 
sel. Then you asked me to use my influence, when 
Simms had failed, to arrange this meeting and have 
Marion there, promising me everything should be 
open and aboveboard. 

“I did my part. And you didn’t keep your word. 
That’s the trouble with you, your word is never de¬ 
pendable. You went to work and packed the meet¬ 
ing—a public meeting called to urge arbitration to 
avoid a disastrous strike. You packed it with your 
own thugs, to assault the Bishop and those that 
opposed you—you’ve been known to boast you’d 
drive him out of town. I told you what would hap¬ 
pen if you attempted violence. 

“By Heaven, I sometimes wonder what you take 
me for. Because I sent the union-labor dynamiters 
from this town to the penitentiary, you seem to 
expect me to countenance methods of yours as vicious 
as theirs. 

“Durand,” persisted Janeway, ignoring interrup¬ 
tions and forcing his words on Durand with savage 
energy, “I’m no longer speaking to you as your legal 
and friendly adviser. But if I were, I couldn’t tell 
you other than this: You can’t safely use force and 


124 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


violence in this country toward men that don’t hap¬ 
pen to agree with you. This isn't Europe—this is 
America, and you can’t enslave men or hire brutes 
to beat up those that oppose your rapacity, without 
sometime paying the penalty. I don't know and 
don't care how much money you’ve made in the last 
three years, but with your stupendous profits you 
can ill afford to stick out in a labor fight, even if your 
men become infected with some of your own mon¬ 
strous greed—and I can’t see but that they have 
much right in this quarrel on their side. And don't 
be too sure of beating this shabby Bishop. He'll 
give you a man's fight before you’re done; you're not 
dealing now with a defenseless woman!” 

It was Durand’s opportunity to sneer again. “ It’s 
a pity, Janeway,” he said coolly, “you couldn't be¬ 
friend her, too!” 

The lawyer's head jerked with the violence of his 
anger; his head fell forward and his eyes shot fire. 

“If she ever so much as raised her little finger to 
me for help,” he exclaimed, throwing himself vi¬ 
ciously into his words, “I’d befriend her, too quick!” 

“Simms,” Durand blustered on defiantly, “tells 
me you’ve ‘ demanded ’ ”—he gave an unpleasant em¬ 
phasis to the w’ord—“to be substituted out of my 
case. I w*ant to tell you I’m glad of it. Don’t 
plume yourself I need you in any way. I’ll have 
my divorce just the same. And you can act as any¬ 
body's attorney you dashed please.” He flung the 
words at his former associate with the air of a man 
who, casting off the last shackles of prudence, says 


THE QUARREL 125 

exactly what he wants to say to a man thoroughly 
hated. 

Janeway’s chair, after his recent explosion, had 
been turned sidewise, and he was gazing wrathfully 
out on the peaceful waters of Lake Michigan. Lis¬ 
tening to Durand’s contemptuous words, he swung 
gradually around to face him as he ceased speaking, 
and regarded him for an embarrassing instant in¬ 
tently but silently. Then he pushed a letter-head 
slowly across the table. “I suppose/’ he remarked 
questioningly, “you mean what you say?” 

Durand, an experienced poker player, “ stood” on 
his hand. “I usually mean what I say!” he retorted 
insolently. 

Janeway was not to be moved from his composure. 
“I’ve no desire,” he said, “to take advantage of an 
angry moment ”—he spoke the words with his accus¬ 
tomed deliberation. “But if you really are equal, 
for once, to sticking to a statement, Durand, put 
that in writing.” 

Unwilling to “take water,” as Kennedy would have 
expressed it, Durand snatched the pen from the ink¬ 
well and wrote out the substance of his words. He 
signed the statement with a flourish. Janeway 
had more than once, and in all sincerity, compli¬ 
mented Durand on his clean, clear handwriting. He 
refrained from doing so now. 

Durand tossed the paper back with further bitter 
recriminations—but to these Janeway made not the 
slightest response. He picked the paper up just as 
Kennedy opened the office door. Perceiving Jane- 


126 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


way’s attention bent on the clearance in his hand, 
Kennedy hesitated. “What is it, Kennedy?” Jane¬ 
way asked, his voice falling back to its usual dry¬ 
ness. 

Kennedy looked nonplussed at Durand. But 
Janeway’s impatience called for a categorical answer. 
“Mrs. Durand, Mr. Janeway,” he said, as if casting 
on the two angry men before him responsibility for 
any possible scene. 

“I will see her at once,” said Janeway instantly. 

Durand, taken completely by surprise, and with 
words now sounding ominous in his ears, reached 
for his hat as if accepting a challenge. “Don’t let 
me interfere.” 

“As far as I’m concerned, you wouldn’t interfere 
in the least,” retorted Janew r ay, injecting as much 
contempt as he possibly could into his words. 1 1 Ken¬ 
nedy,” he snapped, “show Mr. Durand out through 
the corridor.” 

He had been standing at the side of his table. 
He stood now truculently watching Durand follow 
Kennedy, who went through the form of his orders 
w r ith becoming dignity. “Never you mind,” said 
Durand angrily. “I’m quite equal to finding my 
way out of this office.” 

Alone, Janeway turned once more toward his chair, 
passed his hand nervously over his disordered hair— 
what Harrison irreverently termed his jury hair— 
and, sitting down, picked up the paper Durand had 
signed, and adjusted his nose-glasses. He glared at 
it an instant, opened a private drawer and flung 


THE QUARREL 127 

the paper into it, dropped his glasses on the blotting- 
pad in front of him, turned sidewise, and, flattening 
one hand abruptly on the table, stared again stolidly 
out on the lake. 


CHAPTER X 
FACE TO FACE 

The sound of footsteps brought Janeway to his feet; 
Gertrude Durand was entering the room. Through 
the open door behind' Gertrude he saw Kennedy with 
Louise, as the two, talking, came slowly forward. 

Gertrude sought Janeway impulsively. “Jim 
didn’t promise me all of this,” he smiled. 

Gertrude, too, was in good mood. “You say nice 
things, sometimes—for a bachelor.” 

“Bachelors,” he responded, “are less masters of 
the situation than married men; they have to keep 
in practice.” 

“I found her at home,” murmured Gertrude, 
speaking in rapid undertone, “and brought her di¬ 
rectly up. Jim said Bob was with you, so I told him 
not to mention me. Now, Mr. Janeway, I’ve made 
Louise come to you. If you’re not nice to her I’ll 
never speak to you again.” 

She had barely time to say this much when Ken¬ 
nedy and Louise joined them. 

“I’ve only just learned you were back,” said Jane¬ 
way, advancing quickly to meet Durand’s wife. 
“How welcome you are, I won’t undertake—all at 
once—to say!” 


128 




FACE TO FACE 


129 

Louise met his smile with a suspicion of reserve. 
“ You’ve been away a long time/’ he added, more 
seriously, taking his cue from her own restraint. 
Her eyes, he thought, were graver, but her long ab¬ 
sence had left her much the same. He was looking 
at her rather earnestly, and she smiled only slightly 
at his words. “It has been a long time/’ she 
assented. 

“And it must have been a very exciting and very 
remarkable time,” Janeway continued, perceiving 
she was disinclined to bandy formalities. “Some 
time I hope to hear a lot about it.” 

She had spoken exactly six words to him. Yet the 
very sound of those inconsequent words had sum¬ 
moned again the pleasantest moments of his life. In 
an instant of self-consciousness he addressed an anec¬ 
dote to Gertrude. “I was caught once in the woods 
in a blinding thunder-storm,” he said, “with a little 
girl. We had no shelter, and though I was uneasy 
myself, I was trying to comfort her with reassuring 
words. To my amazement she looked up at me and 
said: ‘I’m just tickled to death ’bout thunder an’ 
lightnin’!’ I’m thinking right now,” he added, look¬ 
ing at Louise, “that everybody will be just tickled 
to death to see you safely back from the wars. Why 
run?” he asked of Gertrude, who, with Kennedy, 
was drawing away. 

“My hairdresser is waiting,” professed Gertrude. 
“I’ll leave the car here, Louise,” she said to her 
companion. “You’ll be back for lunch,” she added. 

Jane way, standing by the table as Kennedy and 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


130 

Gertrude withdrew, pointed to a chair. “Be seated, 
Mrs. Durand, do.” 

Louise sat down on the edge of the chair. She 
looked very slight in her veiled toque. Seating him¬ 
self in turn, Janeway regarded his caller with benevo¬ 
lent interest, and drew a long breath. “What hasn’t 
happened since I saw you last—what water over the 
world’s dam! And your brother—have you seen 
your brother, George? No? He deserted the law 
for journalism. Oh, yes, it must be two years ago. 
And he has been in Washington all winter, acting as 
a correspondent. George,” he smiled, “is a very 
militant Socialist.” 

“I quite lost touch with him,” said Louise, “as I 
did with every one for a long time, you know. But 
I hope to see George soon. Gertrude,” she added, * 
returning to the more serious affair, “has explained 
that she is responsible for my coming to you this 
morning.” Louise regarded Janeway doubtfully. 

“She has explained. I’m very glad you’ve come. 
And I’m looking” —he took up his glasses from the 
table as if to point his words— “with simple Fond- 
du Lac curiosity for those French decorations I’ve 
heard about.” 

“Oh, I don’t wear them often,” she said, as if 
taken not unpleasantly by surprise. 

“But you ought to,” he returned. “It should be 
a matter of pride-” 

Her manner changed. “I no longer have any 
pride, Mr. Janeway,” she said simply, and as if to 
have it out and over. “My humiliations have been 



FACE TO FACE 


I 3 i 

quite enough to chasten it.” She did not continue, 
and both paused as they regarded each other. With 
a suspicion of resentment in his tone he asked a 
question: “Have you deserved them?” 

She was too taken aback to make reply, and Jane¬ 
way did not really wait for a reply. “The question 
answers itself,” he continued, “and since wholly un¬ 
deserved, they are no proper blow to a reasonable 
pride for duties well done. Let’s have a very frank 
talk—and you tell me freely whatever is on your 
mind.” 

“To be perfectly frank, then, Mr. Simms notified 
me some time ago that my mother’s lawyer would 
represent me in the court proceedings here.” 

“Yes.” 

“And perhaps it’s as well to say to you directly 
what Mr. Simms would repeat to you from me— 
since neither he nor my husband make any move 
without your sanction.” 

He tried to laugh as he entered a sardonic dis¬ 
claimer. “I’m afraid you’re under some misappre¬ 
hension.” 

“Not, I think, in that respect,” persisted Louise, 
yielding nothing. “And since you know fully the 
situation, we may dispense with unnecessary com¬ 
pliments-” 

“Oh, please!” Janeway, slightly disconcerted, 
raised his hand. “Not so fast, I beg. You must let 
me say, at least, that I have known no more—until 
very lately—than that a suit for divorce had been 
brought-” 






i3 2 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“—and having a specific message to send to my 
husband, Gertrude said I ought to come directly to 
you with it.” 

Janeway tried again to bring a feeble smile to his 
defense. “You speak,” he protested, but in his 
most engagingly quiet manner, “as one who had 
come resolved to say certain things, and feels they 
must be said—which is all right. But I know we 
shall understand each other when the ground is 
cleared. You have your own counsel, of course—” 
He felt it a little cruel to frame the remark so craftily, 
since he only hoped she had none; but he wanted to 
avoid humiliation if she had other counsel, and justi¬ 
fied his reserve by his real feelings. 

“I am but just landed from Paris,” she replied. 
There seemed a note of woman’s helplessness in the 
evasion. It pleased him because it brought her 
closer, but he continued his probing with profes¬ 
sional thoroughness. “I mean,” he explained in his 
very bland way, “you have retained counsel to pro¬ 
tect your interests as they arise.” 

“I have retained no one and done nothing,” she 
returned openly. 

“You should have an attorney and a careful one,” 
said Janeway, but she cut him off from saying more. 

“I can say all that I have to say now, to you,” 
she maintained, determined to speak. “I don’t care 
what Mr. Durand does with my money. It was put 
very foolishly under his control by my mother, and 
I have no desire to fight with him over that—unless 
he persists in this action. But if he drags me into a 



FACE TO FACE 


133 

divorce court to defend charges against myself, 1 
will fight for my money, as well as against any de¬ 
cree for him.” 

Janeway appeared to reflect. “He has already 
dragged you, as you express it, into a divorce court,” 
he remarked, thinking. 

But Louise’s impulse to say all was strong upon 
her. “It should be enough that he has enjoyed 
practically all of my father’s estate, except George’s 
share,” she went on, with some emotion. “What 
have I done to him ? What crime have I been guilty 
of?” 

Janeway, occupied with his thought, spoke ab¬ 
stractedly. “In some circumstances,” he said drily, 
“mere decency constitutes a crime.” 

“Gertrude cabled me that Robert’s suit for a di¬ 
vorce would be heard soon, and that I ought to see 
that my rights were somewhat protected. I lost a 
boat at Cherbourg—and everything conspired to de¬ 
lay me. Do you know when the decree is to be 
granted?” 

His seeming mental torpor persisted; it was only 
seeming; his head was in reality busy, but he an¬ 
swered impassively: “To-day.” 

She rose to her feet. “He will disgrace me in 
spite of everything!” she exclaimed with restraint; 
only her tone betrayed her feeling. “I am too 
late!” 

“No, no!” objected Janeway, persuading her to 
be again seated. “Not too late to take any measures 
to safeguard your rights or your good name. Mr. 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


134 

Durand has sued for a decree on the ground of de¬ 
sertion. And knowing nothing whatever about it” 
—he emphasized the words slightly but fittingly— 
“I supposed that this was agreed upon between you 
and him. And that you would not contest a decree 
on that ground. But you should know”—he threw 
another sort of emphasis into these words—“that 
you have grounds for securing a decree on a cross 
bill.” 

“I had no objection to a separation; he wished to 
be free.” 

“This decree,” he observed quietly, “should make 
you both free.” 

“But I did not consent to being put in the light of 
having neglected my home and deserted him, as 
Gertrude tells me the newspaper say/ 1 she protested, 
with a touch of bitterness. 

“You have been away, you must remember, three 
years.” 

“He asked me to go away.” 

“And turned your absence, of course, to his pur¬ 
pose,” he commented coldly. “However, even that 
is a slight matter. Should you desire the record 
cleared of any such imputation, I will see that it is 
cleared.” Then he paused, toying with his glasses 
under his hand, and seeming to speak after he had 
weighed something and reached a decision. “But 
will you,” he asked at length, “let me be your ad¬ 
viser in the matter?” 

She regarded him, frankly distrustful and some¬ 
what surprised. “I can scarcely understand,” she 


FACE TO FACE 


135 

remarked quietly, “how the head of my husband’s 
legal forces could be my adviser.” 

Janeway made an impatient gesture, but spoke 
placatingly. “One reason,” he smiled, “is because 
you need advice; another is that I am no longer head 
of your husband’s legal forces; and a third is that, 
perhaps, I am as well qualified in the circumstances 
as another to give it to you. Lastly, you could have 
no one to advise you more honestly than I shall try 
to do. Do not, Mrs. Durand, oppose this suit. I 
know the suggestion displeases you. But, I repeat— 
and I speak as your friend—let Mr. Durand, under 
proper conditions, have his divorce and you have 
yours.” 

“You naturally have his interests very much at 
heart.” 

He squirmed slightly, but spoke again openly. “ I 
realize that I have a mountain of distrust to over¬ 
come. But I shall do it.” He leaned forward just 
enough for the emphasis of the words: “It is your 
interests that I have very much at heart.” 

Wholly unprepared for such a declaration, Louise 
retired behind a screen of irony. “And you Mr. 
Durand’s closest adviser!” 

“You are persistingly mistaken,” he returned, his 
voice showing the restraint of impatience. “I am 
not Mr. Durand’s closest adviser. I am no longer 
connected in any way with Mr. Durand’s interests. 
I speak to you not at all as his friend. I speak as 
yours.” 

It was impossible for her not to realize that some 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


136 

unexplained feeling lay behind his declaration. She 
felt bewildered but in some way less apprehensive. 
“Then if you are no longer connected with his in¬ 
terests/’ she exclaimed, “surely I can appeal to your 
mere sense of justice, of right, of everything, Mr. 
Janeway, to confirm my claim that I have done 
nothing that entitles him to a divorce, or to charge 
me with anything disgraceful, such as neglect of my 
home, and desertion!” 

She spoke with deep feeling. For an instant her 
eyes glistened. “ The only conceivable disgrace,” re¬ 
marked Janeway, emphasizing the adjective bitterly, 
“would be not to desert him. You do not under¬ 
stand the distinction between desertion in its legal 
and its moral sense; it is that which confuses you.” 

“It is you, Mr. Janeway, who confuse me. You 
surely have known me somewhat. You have been 
at my home, at my table. You say you speak as a 
friend. Yet my husband drags me into a divorce 
court, and you advise me not to oppose his detesta¬ 
ble charges.” 

“It is because I can’t bear to think of your being 
fettered longer to this man,” exclaimed Janeway, 
with contained energy. “Because this decree can be 
purged of such charges and made to set you free. 
And because,” he added, breaking finally from his 
long restraint, “I want to see you free.” 


CHAPTER XI - 

i 

LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 

Gertrude took Louise to Green Lake to rest and 
think. And with her impulsive energy she urged 
Janeway’s view of what Louise ought to do. Jane¬ 
way kept himself quite within the limits of fairness 
and professional dignity. He drove over to the lake 
and called formally at Gertrude’s cottage, but made 
no effort to overpersuade Louise. He made, in fact, 
no mention of the subject that had come up between 
them. 

Kennedy, who resigned from the corporation staff 
to follow Janeway’s fortunes, had been charged with 
the opening of new offices for Janeway in Fond du 
Lac, and with reopening Janeway’s offices in Chicago. 
He joined Gertrude and Louise at the cottage for 
the week-end, tired out; Judge Harrison and his wife 
had driven over to spend the day. 

Kennedy and Harrison talked over the difficult 
situation between Durand and Louise. Harrison 
said emphatically she must be divorced. Kennedy 
told Louise afterward how the Judge felt. He like¬ 
wise represented to her, himself, the necessity for 
some action that should secure to her the remnants 
of the estate left by her father. “It’s always feast 

137 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


138 

or famine in the steel business/’ he said half cyni¬ 
cally. “Now’s a good time to pull out. If I weren’t 
broke I’d pull out, myself.” 

It was only after Louise had yielded to the views 
of her circle of friends that she perceived how 
strongly Jane way felt. He had held strictly aloof 
from Gertrude’s, going over to the lake for the sec¬ 
ond time only when he was sent for, and Louise, sit¬ 
ting with Gertrude, gave him authority to protect 
her interests in Durand’s suit. “I only want now 
to be free from Robert,” she said, “and as soon as I 
am, to go right back to France. There is work 
there for all of and more than my strength—here I’m 
not needed.” 

After the return of the two women to Fond du 
Lac, Janeway called again to tell what he had done 
as to engaging counsel. But though the firm re¬ 
tained were quite competent, Louise’s natural timid¬ 
ity caused her to shrink from extending her circle of 
legal acquaintance. She preferred, under Gertrude’s 
protecting wing, to seek Janeway for such confer¬ 
ences as were inevitably necessary, and asked that 
she be spared discussing with other lawyers—other 
men, as she said—her intimate affairs. 

On such occasions the personal note was naturally 
excluded from the talk. Janeway took cognizance 
of the precautions with which Louise hedged herself 
in bringing Gertrude with her, but gave no indication 
that it disturbed him. And he rarely met Louise 
elsewhere. 

One afternoon she drove over to Mrs. Harrison 


LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


139 

to take her a purse from Paris. She found only the 
Judge at home. He was sitting alone on the west 
terrace, with a plate of fruit on a table. Louise, 
standing in the doorway, called to him: “What are 
you doing, Uncle Sid?” 

Judge Harrison looked around. Louise was a fa¬ 
vorite. “Come out, come out!” he called. “What 
am I doing? Eating a plum—come try one.” He 
drew a chair near to his own. “I’m eating a plum. 
And one that isn’t exactly right,” he continued, in 
his quaint manner, softened by the slight nasal 
quality that he let into his tones when quite pleased. 

Louise sat down. “What’s the matter with it?” 

“ Can’t tell exactly what is the matter with it.” 
He held the plum gingerly in his fingers, as if analyz¬ 
ing a problem. “But,” he went on, “it’s not just 
right. So I keep eating—hoping with every bite it 
will get sweeter—and it doesn’t. That plum, Lou¬ 
ise,” he added, gazing with half-closed eyes at the 
moiety left of the offender, “is like life; it isn’t ex¬ 
actly to our taste; yet we keep biting at it, and hop¬ 
ing, and biting—but the blamed thing doesn’t often 
get sweeter, does it?” 

Louise looked at the wooded hills to the north. 
“What a beautiful day!” she exclaimed. “What a 
beautiful scene! And with nothing to do but sit 
here and enjoy it, you ought to be perfectly happy.” 

“Most people, Louise, with nothing to do are per¬ 
fectly unhappy,” responded Harrison, with the con¬ 
sideration of a father. “I’ll tell you the real secret 
of happiness—I’ve searched long for it and found it. 


140 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Always have something to do; but don’t always do 
it.” 

As he looked over at her he seemed to recollect 
himself; her teeth were so pretty as she laughed. 
“Now, all this talk about life not being quite ripe, 
isn’t for you, Louise,” he said apologetically. 
“You’re so young yet.” 

“Oh, but it decidedly is for me,” she averred, with 
an effort at lightness. “It’s exactly for me. I won¬ 
der,” she added, “whether it’s for everybody? 
How’s the rheumatism, Uncle Sid?” 

“Not very good.” 

“Are you doing anything for it?” 

“Doing everything. When the final break-up of 
my old ship comes and the doctor says do this, or 
do that, or do the other thing, I’ll have to say: ‘I’ve 
done it; there’s absolutely nothing more to do.’ All 
my life,” he continued, half grumbling, “I’ve been 
on the verge of having health. But at my age I 
can’t afford to contract any more good habits. I’ve 
got too many; I die the victim of them.” 

He paused and regarded her with a fond look. 
His glance included everything, from her pumps to 
her hat. “I like to hear you call me ‘Uncle Sid,’” 
he went on, half musing. “Never call me anything 
else. No!” he declared, with just enough of gentle 
emphasis to point his thought. “My maunderings 
are not for you. And I’ll tell you why; the best of 
your life is still ahead.” 

Louise made a hopeless gesture. “Oh, dear!” 

He cut her off. “I mean it,” he insisted, and was 


LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


141 

about to go on, when his eyes fell on the doorway 
behind her. “Ah, Janeway!” he exclaimed. “Come 
out—too nice to stay indoors to-day.” 

* J 

Janeway, nothing loath, ventured forward with a 
perfunctory apology. 

“No interruption at all,” declared Harrison, point¬ 
ing to a third chair. “ Sit where you can look across 
the Skokie. I’ve always been fond of the afternoon 
sun, Janeway. The west has always had a particu¬ 
lar attraction for me. It was the dream of my 
youth to lay my bones on the Pacific slope. Men 
feel most deeply, not on what they’ve done, but on 
what they’ve wanted to do. 

“Janeway,” explained the Judge, speaking to 
Louise, who seemed somewhat like a quail ready for 
immediate flight, “is only here for a political pow¬ 
wow. There’s a subcommittee meeting in Chicago 
to-morrow which I have asked him to attend, be¬ 
cause I couldn’t.” 

“Wouldn’t,” corrected Janeway. 

“And he could, because he’s going to" be there 
anyway. Well, how do things look, Henry?” 

The Harding-Cox campaign was in full swing. 
Harrison was responsible for his State. Janeway an¬ 
swered without hesitation: “It’s all Harding. He 
always tells me,” added Janeway, addressing Louise, 
“ I know nothing about an election. That’s why I’m 
an authority just now; any political dub—as the 
Judge classifies me—can read the signs this time. 
I suppose,” he went on, “that to live up to my bad 
reputation I ought to predict Cox’s election. But I 
refuse.” 




142 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Louise rose. Harrison protested. “ WTiere’re you 
going? Sit still.” 

Louise did not waver. “Aunt Elizabeth won’t be 
home for an hour. I’m going down to the swamp. 
I told Gertrude I’d bring some cattails home.” 

“It’s wet down there,” objected the Judge. “Bet¬ 
ter get Chris to help you. He’s in the garden.” 

Louise was sure she didn’t need any help. “I only 
want a few, anyway.” She started across the lawn. 
The two men watched her walk away. Her figure 
was lithe and her step sure. Her observers eyed her 
together, thinking the same thing, but with greatly 
differing view-points. 

“What a shame,” mused Harrison, moved to re¬ 
sentment, “for Bob to throw over such a woman for 
Maymie Montgomery! Why, just to get one good 
look at that girl”—he nodded toward Louise’s figure 
disappearing down the hill—“would stir the pulses 
of a decent man on his death-bed. And Bob throws 
her over for a common rip! It would be interest¬ 
ing,” added the Judge, ruminating, “to know just 
what that man thinks of himself.” 

“It might be appalling,” commented Janeway, 
masking the fire in his heart that Harrison was so 
unwittingly feeding. “It’s odd,” he went on, “how 
our views change. I didn’t use to think so much of 
good people—I used to think the bad most inter¬ 
esting. The longer I live, the more I think of saints 
—and the less I think of sinners—who, with a few 
honorable exceptions, are, after all, a damned busy, 
troublesome lot to get on with.” 



LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


I 43 

“I don’t know what’s got into Bob lately,” re¬ 
marked Harrison. “I don’t mind a man’s being 
ugly when he’s crossed. But that man can’t be good- 
natured even when he’s having his own way. 

“I’m sorry you’re leaving us, Janeway,” he went 
on, pressing another thought. “ You’ve played the 
game straight with Bob—though I can’t allow you 
much credit for that. No man should be a crook 
till he’s past forty—and that reminds me, you’re 
nearing the danger-line. Until I was forty I could 
look any criminal boldly in the face. We’re going 
to miss you in nineteen-twenty and twenty-one. 
The steel business and every other business has got 
some big bumps coming to it the next year or two.” 

“You can steer the Durand Companies past 
them,” said Janeway. 

“But I don’t want to,” returned the Judge testily. 
“My business is to find other men to do my work; 
and Simms—well, you and Bob couldn’t hit it off. 
The trouble with Bob is,” observed Harrison, reflect¬ 
ing, “nobody can teach him anything. He’s im¬ 
mensely capable in manufacturing—but that’s the 
big end of his capability. I never was endowed, my¬ 
self, with any phenomenal amount of intellect, but 
I’ve always been just smart enough to learn. Well,” 
he sighed philosophically, “as regards you and Bob, 
I made a mistake somewhere in my psychology.” 

“You’re older than I am,” said Janeway. “You 
know more about men than I do. But one impres¬ 
sion I’ve long ago fixed in my mind. No man,” he 
went on dogmatically, “that has got his head full of 


144 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


women ever liked me—and none ever will. I’ve 
tried it out again and again, among men high and 
low. It’s a cinch that if a man is chasing a woman 
he won’t set great store by me; and that if we cross 
each other’s paths often enough”—Janeway was 
gathering steam as he went on—“we’ll clash!” He 
finished with a snap. 

“Clashing,” assented Harrison mildly, “is some¬ 
times inevitable. But,” he continued, relapsing into 
lazy irony, “we’re counselled to forgive, Janeway 
as we hope to be forgiven-” 

“True, Judge,” assented Janeway in turn, “true. 
But as far as my forgiving Durand is concerned, you 
must remember God can afford to take chances on a 
man long after it would be suicide for a corporation 
lawyer to do it.” 

Harrison laughed silently. Janeway rose from his 
chair with the simulated indifference of a man merely 
tired of sitting. “Mrs. Durand may get bogged 
down there if it’s wet,” he remarked to his compan¬ 
ion. “I’ll hunt Chris up and send him down to get 
what she wants.” 

Harrison eyed him enigmatically as he walked 
away. In the affairs of men, as they related to the 
gentler sex, the Judge usually relied on Elizabeth for 
his impressions, and now, something she had recently 
hinted recurred to his mind. But Judge Harrison, 
his flair once supplied, was no common hound. “I’ll 
find Chris for you,” he called after Janeway, with a 
sudden show of activity—but only to confirm his 
nascent suspicion. 




LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


145 

Janeway half turned in his steps and raised his 
hand. “Not at all! Sit right where you are. If I 
don’t find him/’ he added with brutal frankness, 
“I’ll walk down there myself.” 

“Take care you don’t fall in yourself,” retorted 
Harrison darkly. Janeway started, without even a 
show of indifference, down the hill. 

“What about our conference?” cried the Judge. 

Janeway turned again unfeelingly. “I’ll be back 
in ten minutes.” 

Harrison, ruminating on the curious things of life, 
watched Janeway stride away. So far as the Judge 
could determine, he did not even make a pretense of 
hunting up Chris. He was heading for an elm— 
Judge Harrison called it the finest in the county— 
that stood well down toward the swamp. Harrison 
saw him pass the rustic seat under it, and knew he 
was hunting, not for the gardener, but for Louise. 

She was standing amid marshy ground, having 
found a tiny hillock. Cattails grew in front of her, 
and in her hand she held one. She was reaching for 
another when she heard a voice from behind. 

“I came down to help.” 

Louise had hardly need to turn to know it was 
Janeway. 

“Thank you,” she said, elevating her tone to one 
of formal courtesy, “but I really don’t need any 
help.” Yet, to her embarrassment, as she partly 
turned to say the words, one foot slipped from her 
island foothold into the soft marsh. 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


146 

“ You haven’t made much progress/’ he remarked, 
looking at the lone cattail, as she recovered herself. 

“It’s so wet here!” She balanced herself as she 
spoke. 

“Cattails,” he observed unsympathetically, “don’t 
grow on dry ground.” 

“And they’re so hard to get at,” she added, pass¬ 
ing over his remark. 

“Come this way,” he suggested, pointing; but his 
suggestions were always mandatory. “You can get 
all you want here.” 

Louise shrugged her shoulders. “It’s wetter over 
there,” she objected. 

“There’s a log to walk on right down among 
them.” 

She reluctantly prepared to get off her island. 
Ignoring his extended hand, except for a mild “thank 
you,” as she sprang to where he stood, Louise began 
to throw out a light smoke-screen of talk—something 
unusual for her—so unusual that Janeway, who knew 
her better than she realized, remarked it as a symp¬ 
tom of apprehension. As a boy he had followed 
gun-shy birds along reedy margins, and knew some¬ 
thing of their flutterings. He led the way, interpos¬ 
ing only poised comments to Louise’s small talk, to 
where an old tree had fallen into the swamp. 

“Do I know this place?” he echoed, in response 
to a sceptical inquiry, as they walked on. “Better 
than I know the law.” He stopped and faced her. 
“Would you listen to my first experience in this 
swamp?” 



LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


147 

Louise did not say she would, nor that she could 
not very well help herself. She merely stood at 
attention, with critical eyes bent on the cattail she 
held in her hand. 

“That’s not at all a good specimen,” observed 
Janeway, interrupting himself and putting out his 
hand as if to take the cattail. She would not sur¬ 
render. “What was your experience?” she asked 
politely. 

“I couldn’t have been more than four or five 
years old,” he said, pausing beside her. “One Sun¬ 
day, father and mother went to church and left me 
alone. I wandered over and joined the Ross boys. 
The Ross boys belonged to a poverty-stricken, gypsy¬ 
like family of fishermen, hunters, and vagabonds gen¬ 
erally. But when I could get with the Ross boys 
my hunger for adventure was sometimes more than 
gratified. Afterward, when I took a sort of leader¬ 
ship among them, they became known as my Dutch 
brigade. 

“That day I found the younger element of the 
family—there must have been a dozen boys and only 
one girl, Ann—bound for this swamp to get cattails. 
To youngsters a swamp is a place of adventure; there 
are always snakes here, and there were timber-wolves 
back of it in those days, with stories of bears that 
ate up bad boys. Even then I knew it was wicked 
to do things on Sunday—but the Ross gang wanted 
—as you do—cattails; we soaked them in kerosene 
to make torches of. 

“I crawled out on an old log, lying like that one, 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


148 

half in the water. I couldn’t quite reach the cattail 
I was after, so I caught hold of a dead branch of the 
log, to stretch out after the prize. I grasped it. 
The branch broke. Down I went, head first, into 
the water. It couldn’t have been over a foot deep, 
but it scared me to death. The brigade pulled me 
out, and, to console me, told me there was a big 
moccasin snake right where I fell in! Ann wiped 
away my tears and stopped their scare stories, but 
when I got home, very miserable, the wet clothes had 
to be explained, and the wickedness of ‘ breaking the 
Sabbath’ was brought home to me; I don’t mean by 
whipping; by very sober counsel. Whether it was 
from the talk or the fright, I don’t know, but from 
that day to this I’ve had a holy horror of seeking 
adventure Sunday mornings. And—isn’t it odd— 
I’ve never been down since to this swamp after cat¬ 
tails until just now.” 

“Then how can you say you know it?” 

“ Why, I’ve trapped muskrats here, and mink, and 
all sorts of things, and shot snipe and dug out wood¬ 
chucks, and cut fish-poles, and wallow for whistles—” 
He halted in his steps. “ Those cattails look pretty 
good,” he said, pointing. “And there’s the log to 
get them on. They’re much larger than this one, 
you see,” he said, taking from her hand the one 
Louise had. “What shall we do wdth this—throw 
it away?” 

“I suppose you might as well.” 

“No,” he said suddenly. “Small as it is, it has 
one merit; you picked it.” He laid it on the ground, 


LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 


149 

stepped out on the half-submerged log heading into 
the water, and put out his hand. “Come on.” 

Louise hesitated. “I’m afraid.” 

“Oh, no.” 

“I might get dizzy.” 

“You won’t come to any harm if you do. Give 
me your hand.” 

“Maybe there are snakes.” 

“If there are, they’re bound to bite me first.” 

He had his way. Step by step, her hand firmly 
in his, she followed him down the log to where he 
placed her on a hummock close to a luxuriant clump 
of the rushes. And while she took them one by one 
from him, balancing herself gingerly meanwhile, he 
cut the best of the supply. And, as if loath to lose 
it, prolonged the moment by talking, rewarded if 
he could coax from Louise brief or one-syllabled 
responses. 

Nor had her instinct of caution deceived her. For 
never had Janeway been more contained in manner, 
more easy in utterance, or surer of his flow of negli¬ 
gible even if interesting comment. 

One arm being comfortably filled with fine speci¬ 
mens, she stopped him. Taking her hand again, he 
piloted her, a step at a time, to dry land, not escap¬ 
ing without sinking a foot more than once into the 
bog, himself. Safely ashore, Louise looked at her 
watch. 

“Mercy!” she exclaimed, preparing to move 
promptly on. “I’d no idea it was so late.” 

“That’s the first remark you’ve volunteered for a 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


150 

long time,” he observed, picking up the first cat¬ 
tail where he had laid it down. “ You’re particu¬ 
larly quiet this afternoon.” 

She professed surprise. He asked to carry the 
cattails. She objected as long as she decently could 
and finally would not give in. But she broke the 
fall of her stubbornness with a more lively manner, 
and, looking satisfied over her armful, said: “I don’t 
see how I can ever thank you for helping me get 
these. And your shoes are all mud!” 

“So are your pumps,” he retorted, looking at her 
feet. Louise’s feet, from the very first, had been 
greatly to his liking. “Young women shouldn’t hunt 
cattails in pumps—but they probably always will.” 

They were approaching the seat under the elm. 
Janeway had bided his time. 

“I want to talk to you just for a moment,” he 
said, pausing. “Will you sit down?” 

She glanced up with deeply innocent eyes. “Oh, 
I’d love to, but it’s really too late, Mr. Janeway. I 
must get home to dress. Gertrude has guests for 
dinner to-night—I shall be late as it is. Really, it’s 
been awfully good of you to help me-” 

“Really, it’s been nothing of the sort,” he said 
indifferently. ‘ ‘ But-’ ’ 

“But”—she took the word deliberately out of 
his mouth—“aside from little courtesies, you have 
been more than thoughtful in my big troubles. I 
do appreciate it, Mr. Janeway, but I know you’ll let 
me hurry home now.” 

They were facing each other. Without speaking, 




LOUISE GATHERS CATTAILS 151 

he only regarded her professedly innocent but some¬ 
what troubled eyes. A smile hid itself at the cor¬ 
ners of his mouth—a serious smile—one of patient 
protest. 

“I’ve done very little of anything for you/’ he 
went on, at length. “Next to nothing—I know 
that. I only wish it could have been more—” She 
tried to interrupt. After the first few words she 
could not. Paying no heed to her disclaimers, he 
spoke quietly but unyieldingly on. It was his look¬ 
ing at her with such grave eyes that almost com¬ 
pelled her silence. She stood still. “Perhaps,” he 
said, “the little I’ve tried to do will plead now for a 
very few minutes, even if the soup should grow cold.” 



CHAPTER XII 


JANEWAY SPEAKS 

She regarded him almost helplessly, but took the 
chance his words afforded to force a laugh. “I cer¬ 
tainly didn’t mean to be rude—did I seem so?” she 
asked, as they walked to the bench. 

He turned her subterfuge of words to his own ad¬ 
vantage. “You couldn’t be rude. You might be 
unduly apprehensive.” Sitting down beside her, he 
noted the troubled expression on her face, as she 
looked up and waited for him to begin—and felt like 
a brute at compelling her to listen. 

Her eyes now really were innocent—there was no 
innocence shammed in them. And they had, with 
their innocence, that concern, that expression of 
helpless fear he had more than once seen in the 
eyes of women on the witness-stand, when he took 
them for cross-examination. That it boded him no 
good he knew; but he did not know why. 

“Any one else could do this better than I,” he be¬ 
gan desperately. He looked down to collect him¬ 
self. “I’ve been sort of supervising this troublesome 
—I mean troublesome only for you—affair that Mr. 
Durand has inflicted on you. You’ve had to come 
to see me at the office concerning it. You’ve always 
brought Gertrude. I approved, though I’d much 
rather have seen you alone; and you would have 

152 



JANEWAY SPEAKS 153 

been just as safe from the intrusion of the slightest 
personal note into our talks. But now you will not 
seriously need to come again to my office for con¬ 
sultation. Your attorneys know just what to do— 
all that is over. 

“Now that it is over, and that you are on the 
verge of being free, and that you say you are going 
right back to France—I must say something to you. 
You’ve alwavs seemed afraid of me—I can’t tell 
why-” 

She attempted to disclaim. He gave her no 
chance. 

“And that has made me very much afraid of you,” 
he persisted, as if he had something to say and 
must say it. 

“Why, Mr. Janeway!” she exclaimed, in an effort 
to avert the inevitable, “that’s extraordinary—” 
But her instinct told her what was about to break. 

“It has made me self-conscious,” he said, with 
simple frankness, “and yet”—he looked fairly at her 
now and spoke without hesitation—“I’m continually 
filled with thoughts of you. Every time I see you,” 
he said, “I sink deeper. When my thoughts belong 
to myself and not to others, I think of nothing else 
—and no one else. I’ve wished to God a thousand 
times I might have met you before all this tragedy 
came into your life! But that’s idle. Only the 
present belongs to us. 

“ Could you, do you think,” he asked, very quietly, 
“care anything whatever for me—trust me enough 
to let me try to make you happy?” 






THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


154 

All the fluttering, all the nervousness, was gone 
from her heart. Only a reality, terrible in its clear¬ 
ness, confronted Louise. She knew he was looking 
at her, waiting. She raised her eyes, as if she could 
not speak too quickly to relieve his suspense, but 
before she spoke he read his answer in them. 

“How shall I explain?” she faltered, low and 
hurriedly. “What woman might not be proud to 
listen to what you have just said ? But I shall never 
marry again. Do not say you have done so little 
for me; you have done so much! You have been the 
very soul of kindness. It is only my own position I 
can think of—not yours. Since I first knew you I 
have changed greatly; and if I ever had a thought 
of remarriage—though I never have—it would be 
far from me now. It is impossible for me to remarry 
while my former husband lives—I am a Catholic.” 

How narrowly she watched his face as she spoke, 
to break the humiliation she knew would be his—no 
matter how she put it or what she said! 

He started at her final word. “A Catholic?” he 
echoed. 

“I thought you knew it,” she went on, crushing 
her handkerchief in her hand. “Gertrude knows it 
—I’ve not advertised the fact, but I supposed our 
circle were aware.” 

He looked at her, completely surprised. “Were 
you brought up a Catholic?” 

“No, no. I became one in France.” 

“But suppose, for a moment, you were not—how 
should you feel then?” 



JANE WAY SPEAKS 15 5 

“Oh, Mr. Janeway! How can I be anything but 
perfectly honest with you? Is it quite fair to ask 
me to suppose what is not? To make me analyze 
impressions at best so newly formed— we’ve known 
each other so formally, so little-” 

“You don’t like me.” 

She repressed a quick protest, and unable to bear 
his scrutiny, now cold and searching, looked away. 
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I haven’t the 
slightest reason to complain. I am sorry—very 
sorry—I inflicted this on you.” 

He moved as if to rise—at least to give her a 
chance to rise—but she did not stir. He watched 
her face in profile; her lip quivered; then she turned 
suddenly toward him. Her eyes were half blinded 
with tears. “Do remember,” she pleaded, “I have 
suffered much.” She seemed groping for words. “I 
am so weak when my emotions are stirred.” 

“I know you have suffered; God forbid I should 
add to your suffering; I nourished hope that I might 
make it only a bad dream in your life. We can’t 
control an indifference to people, any more than we 
can our impulsions toward them. Believe me, I have 
no grievance. I’m only sorry to have cost you a 
tear. And you’ve become a Catholic 1” he said, half 
to himself, half to escape the impasse . “How came 
that? You went over in the Bishop’s party,” he 
continued, his mind working fast. “Did Marion 
make a Catholic of you?” he demanded resentfully. 

“I don’t know that he even knows I am one,” she 
answered. “He has been away most of the time 





THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


156 

•since my return. It was France, war, the suffering, 
the dying—death. All of that, I know not what 
more, made me a Catholic. I saw how those men 
died—their shell-torn, patient enduring to the end; 
it was that, perhaps, that made me what I am.” 

She drew a breath as if to take courage. “'And 
here,” she went on, less tensely, “nobody will under¬ 
stand. I know that. I realized it all then. I hoped 
in those drear} 7 days I might die; but I did not. 
So I’m trying to walk—as I expected to—alone.” 

Her eyes made her only direct appeal to him for 
something of leniency, some suspension of harsh 
judgment. 

They rose together and walked slowly, for a time 
without speaking. He told her he wanted, at least, 
some time to hear all—everything about France, 
about her in France, as he put it. Then he halted 
in the path. “ Would you let me ask you just one 
question? It’s an easy one.” 

She returned his gaze calmly. “What is it?” 

“ Would you let me go and just talk with Bishop 
Marion about this? You see,” he added, as she 
hesitated, “it’s all Greek to me—though nothing to 
fuss any one about, nothing to worn' about. Only 
that I might just speak to him, and hear what he 
has to sav?” 

“I can tell you now what he will have to say.” 

“Ah, but remember, do, I am a lawyer. I can't 
take any evidence but the best. I know all you 
would say. I know that marriage is indissoluble in 
the eyes of the Catholic Church. Don’t tell me 




JANE WAY SPEAKS 15 7 

what he wall say—let me go to him—may I just go 
to him?” 

She turned her face to the evening sun. The sky, 
flecked by tiny white clouds, held the orb of life sus¬ 
pended in the clearest blue. In the stillness of the 
moment she looked at Janeway. Her expression re¬ 
vealed only her unaffected honesty. 

“You are big and fine and strong, Mr. Janeway; I 
know that. I believe you are generous. But it is 
easy for you to ask more than you seem to ask. My 
poor head whirls when I try to think so fast. I can’t 
answer your question to-day.” She spoke almost 
pleadingly. “You know how much it implies. No 
matter which w r ay I might speak, I should be placed 
in a false position.” 

His slight laugh confessed his defeat. “Forgive 
me if I ought not to have asked it. But what v T ill 
not a man do when he is fighting for his life—and 
you’re all of that to me. I may say, though,” he 
went on, in lighter vein, “that no matter how much 
I’ve ever taxed it, I’ve never caught that ‘poor’ 
head of yours napping very much.” 

“Do my eyes look as if I’d been crying?” She 
turned to him for inspection as simply as a child. 
The confidence stirred him too deeply. “It’s not 
that I care for myself,” she added, “but for both our 
sakes I want this kept sacred.” 

Her eyes, he confessed, did tell tales. And he de¬ 
cided that a swifter pace would quiet them. They 
made a detour to the garden, avoiding serious things 
in their talk, and spent some time there. 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


* 5 8 

“Do you know,” he remarked, as they started 
again for the house, “you are endowed with one 
rare faculty? I’ve heard of bankers that could re¬ 
fuse a man money and send him away satisfied. 
You refuse a man life and leave him breathing. But 
it’s the magic of your presence that holds me up. 
When I leave you, it will be like coming out of the 
ether after the operation!” 

They were at the foot of the steep ascent of the 
hill. He looked at her, trying faintly to smile, and 
doing so, held out his hand for the cattails. “Let 
me carry them now. You know the worst; you know 
you have nothing more to fear—as I have nothing 
more to hope. I’ll take the burden.” 

Louise, clinging to her rushes, stood still. Some¬ 
thing like a needle shot through her heart. In that 
sharp pain she realized the truth; in that moment 
she knew that already she loved this man who had 
called so strongly to her. She could not help it— 
something new in her life was there where only 
emptiness had been. “No!” She spoke the word 
clearly. “You shan’t take the whole burden; take 
half.” She let him gather a part of the rushes that 
lay on her arm. “We will divide it,” she said, not 
trusting herself to look up—“each carry our share.” 


CHAPTER XIII . 

JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS 

When Janeway stood again with Louise before Judge 
Harrison, the Judge surveyed them critically. In 
particular, while Louise threw out a calculated bar¬ 
rage of abuse for the difficulties of the swamp, the 
Judge scrutinized first her feet, then Janeway’s. 
When the adventurers took up their story together, 
his eyes wandered unobtrusively from Louise’s ruined 
pumps to Janeway’s shoes, which indicated some¬ 
thing like trench service. Janeway understood per¬ 
fectly well the suspicions hidden behind the expres¬ 
sionless gaze of his long-time associate, but showed 
no interest in his mental attitude. 

“Fell in, didn’t you?” grumbled the Judge, ad¬ 
dressing Janeway, while Louise continued a diver¬ 
sion. 

Janeway decided it to be a good time to take all 
comers firmly in hand. He set his disreputable shoes 
well forward and looked at them approvingly, and 
then at Louise’s, with all composure. “Not so, 
Judge,” he replied, with deliberate emphasis, “I 
did not fall in.” 

“Didn’t fall in, eh?” 

Janeway eyed the old man calmly. “I jumped 


159 


160 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

“Jumped in,” echoed the Judge, in an uncomforta¬ 
ble nasal tone of bafflement. “I see.” 

Janeway hoped he did not see, but could not be 
sure of it. 

“I never in the world could have got such beau¬ 
ties, if Mr. Janeway hadn’t come to my rescue,” de¬ 
clared Louise, displaying her rushes. But Judge 
Harrison had the scent of bigger game; his curiosity 
had been roused, and the cattails were irrelevant to 
the larger issue. 

While the three were talking, Mrs. Harrison joined 
the party. And while Mrs. Harrison held her in 
confab, Louise was dismayed to see Gertrude and 
Kennedy coming out of the house. “Gertrude!” 
she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?” 

“What should I be doing anywhere else?” asked 
Gertrude. 

“Haven’t you a dinner on to-night?” demanded 
Louise. “And haven’t I been on needles and pins 
hah an hour, for fear I’d be late ? ” Either Janeway’s 
eyes were fixed mildly in reproach on Louise, or she 
imagined they were. 

Gertrude regarded her with surprise. “To-mor¬ 
row night, dear, to-morrow night,” she said gently, 
and turned to Janeway. “You could have told her 
that.” 

“How, I?” asked Janeway. “I knew I was in¬ 
vited for to-morrow night, but I presumed you dine 
every night.” 

“Yes, but to-night I dine out—down-town, with 
the Child’s Welfare League—to arrange for our hos- 


JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS 161 

pital bazaar. And I brought you a telegram, Lou¬ 
ise,” continued Gertrude, fishing in her hand-bag. 

Louise read her message. “It’s from Brother 
George!” she announced. “He’s on his way from 
Washington, and will be here to-morrow.” 

Judge Harrison sniffed political news from the 
capital and was content. Fargo reached Gertrude’s 
in time for lunch next day. He spent the afternoon 
with his sister, and in the evening Judge Harrison 
and his wife joined Gertrude’s dinner-party. 

Fargo, fresh from Newspaper Row, was full of gos¬ 
sip, and Harrison, as soon as he decently could, be¬ 
gan to quiz him on the campaign. Knowing that 
George hated all political parties with impartial can¬ 
dor, Harrison regarded him as an unprejudiced ob¬ 
server, and was much elated at hearing that in 
Fargo’s opinion the West was solidly Republican. 
“But the Socialists,” added Geroge, “will poll the 
biggest vote in their history.” 

“They do that every time they vote,” commented 
Harrison drily. “You’re a good authority, George,” 
he added, “on everything except Socialism—hm? 
What do you hear about Governor Cox?” 

“Lots of our people will vote the Republican ticket 
to get even with the bunch that put Debs in prison,” 
declared George, with much personal resentment in 
his manner. 

“And the sad feature of it,” remarked the Judge 
meditatively, “is that he ought to have been put in 
prison.” 

“Instead of sending Debs to prison,” retorted 


162 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


George, “they ought to have sent the whining Allies 
to prison for obtaining American goods under false 
pretenses. They bunked us, Judge. They got our 
money and our men and our gush, and now our 
people have waked up to find their game was the 
same old game, played with the same old marked 
cards in the same old way. And this man”—George 
pointed accusingly at Janeway—“spent his time 
preaching to us to uphold the law—to obey the law 
—and let the thing be put over.” 

“What else should you expect me to preach?” 
asked Janeway, unperturbed. “You say the laws 
are bad. You say, make the question of war a ref¬ 
erendum—don’t leave it in the hands of dishonest 
politicians to determine. Very well; get your law 
put on a statute basis and I’ll obey it. But I’d 
rather obey bad laws or fool laws than overturn all 
law. The farmer that burned his barn to get rid of 
the rats was an exemplar of good reasoning compared 
to your reasoning, George. No matter what opinion 
I held of the laws or of the action of the President 
or of Congress, it was my business to obey when 
the laws were put on the books—and your busi¬ 
ness.” 

“It’s not quite fair, George,” interposed the Judge, 
“to say Janeway spent all his time preaching that 
doctrine. Part of it was spent keeping you out of 
jail.” 

“George!” exclaimed Louise, aghast. “I never 
heard anything of this—put you in jail!” 

Janeway disclaimed. “It wasn’t quite as bad as 


JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS 163 

that, Mrs. Durand,” he said, dismissing the subject 
mildly. “ George annoyed the district attorneys oc¬ 
casionally when he got mad. But he usually man¬ 
aged to cool off at the psychological moment.” 

“ That’s all right,” persisted the Judge. “ George 
is young. He doesn’t know who pulled the strings. 
I do.” 

“Mr. Janeway certainly kept them off me,” said 
Fargo. “I ought to be grateful. I hope I am. 
But I think I’d respect myself more now if I’d gone 
to Leavenworth with the rest of the men that stood 
for their principles. There ought never to have been 
any necessity for pulling strings,” he added. “And 
there wouldn’t have been if we’d had a Congress 
in Washington to stand up for the right of free 
speech. 

“But I shouldn’t expect too much of Congress¬ 
men, I suppose,” he continued. “As a newspaper 
man, I’ve had to mix with them. They struck me 
mostly as pitiful lawyers, men that have traded, in 
their so-called profession, on the contemptible vices 
of their fellow men; men that strive to throw a 
glamour of legality over sharp practice, smirk at 
crookedness, incite dishonest litigation, and then 
blossom out from their professional dunghills into 
public life. What, for instance, is to be expected of 
men who by a rising vote—so there should be no 
record—exempt themselves from a draft that sends 
their constituents to the rats and mud and shells 
and gas of European trenches? And when they 
vote taxes, filch candy pennies from the pockets of 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


164 

little children, in order to exempt their own salaries 
from income tax?” 

“We can’t expect much from Congress, George,” 
said Janeway deprecatingly. “We must look to the 
press for better things,” he added, winking soberly 
at Louise. 

Fargo laughed cynically. “The press !” he cried. 
“Untrammelled, free; palladium of our liberties, trib¬ 
une of the people! We tried that bunk out during 
the war, too. Of course it couldn’t be anything but 
bunk. Every time you scratch a newspaper owner, 
you uncover a millionaire; nobody else can afford to 
run a newspaper, and nothing is so cowardly as a 
million dollars—except two millions.” 

“I see Chicago is having its periodical row over 
the collection of the city garbage,” sniffed Judge 
Harrison. “Why don’t you suggest, George, that 
the municipal authorities are overlooking their hand 
in not letting that contract to the newspapers? Of 
course, I don’t mean your paper—I mean the papers 
that specialize in the daily collection of crime and 
social filth—the moral garbage. Their organization 
is so complete—so far-reaching—that practically 
none of it escapes them. Why not take advantage 
of such efficiency? Why not enlist this intelligent 
and highly trained agency, that might be put at the 
city’s disposal? Such an organization, it seems to 
me, could include the household refuse in their pro¬ 
gramme with slight additional expense, and thus col¬ 
lect the domestic and social garbage together.” 

“You needn’t exclude my paper, Judge,” retorted 




JUDGE HARRISON SUSPECTS 165 

Fargo. “We take second place to none in circula¬ 
tion and enterprise; in fact, we aim to lead. But to 
appreciate our moderation, Judge, you ought to 
see, not the stuff that we print but the stuff we keep 
out.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 

On a June morning, with a blue sky and a northeast 
wind rippling the lake sunshine, the platform of the 
Lakeshore railway-station at Fond du Lac presents 
at train time an active scene. Fond du Lac is rather 
too far removed from Chicago to be a suburb, or to 
attract the year-in-and-out commuter; yet many 
Chicago business men make it and its vicinity their 
home for a good part of the year. It gives to the 
Board of Trade man, the La Salle Street man, the 
merchant of the larger class, and to the professional 
city man, a country life that complements admirably 
the short business hours of an exacting city day. 
About Fond du Lac they may have their country 
estates on one of the small lakes, or on the river, or 
on the bluffs of Lake Michigan itself, with many 
miles of restful country roads and lanes for riding 
and driving. At Fond du Lac they have their yacht- 
club and their golf-clubs; and their hothouse off¬ 
spring have at least a counterfeit presentment of 
what real country life means to real boys and girls. 

When the time for the fast morning trains to the 
city approaches, clean-shaven business men, erect in 
figure and alert in manner—regardless of how jaded 
they may really feel—gather on the lake-front plat¬ 
form to go to the city. They chat in groups, or 


GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 


167 

stand singly, reading their papers or smoking, or 
both; those indisposed to talk or read walk briskly 
up and down, drinking in the tonic air, and pausing 
at times to look across and launch their schemes for 
continued achievement over the blue waters and 
golden horizon of Lake Michigan, or to watch lazy 
wavelets crawling in the morning sun up the sandy 
beach below the tracks. 

There is but one further type of business man to 
be added to those in such a scene, and of these there 
are rarely more than two or three. They are thin 
of figure; usually the hair above the ears is fringed 
with gray. If there be a mustache it, too, shows 
the coming of gray. These men are less absorbed in 
thought and are not always reading. Their eyes are 
usually cast on the pavement as they walk, and they 
are quick to look up and solicit, as it were, deferen¬ 
tially, a nod of recognition or a word from the more 
successful. Their dress is neat, but it is the neat¬ 
ness of clothes well cared for, and a hat saved over 
from a last season. In a word, these are men whose 
hold on the life of success all about them has slipped, 
whose ventures have just failed of fruition, and who 
have had to a come down,” as the Irish say, in their 
circumstances and their hopes. They are always on 
hand at a funeral, or ready to call in kindly fashion 
on a successful man who has broken in health. In 
such catastrophes they experience a consolation, and 
serve thus as a minor link in the social chain. Nor 
are they ever wholly ignored by the men of action 
and achievement who have long known them. 


i68 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Awaiting the train on such a morning are also to 
be seen highly groomed, smartly tailored and hatted 
women, young for the most part, and possessed—at 
least apparently—of unlimited health and strength, 
city bound for a day’s shopping. With that art that 
conceals art, their costumes reflect only simplicity, 
but examined, their appointments are quite in keep¬ 
ing with those of women that have earned for Ameri¬ 
cans the reputation of being the best-dressed women 
in the world; if there be any strain on the purse of 
the provider, none is apparent in the appearance of 
the provided. 

Every fashionable suburb of Chicago and the 
super-prosperous tributary towns outside the sub¬ 
urb zone reflect such railway-station scenes at almost 
any time of the year; for neither business as con¬ 
ducted in Chicago, nor shopping, as stimulated by 
fertile State Street brains, allow extended vacations 
to men of affairs or to women of society—fashion is 
as exacting as the pursuit of riches—or, more exactly, 
the pursuit of providing funds to keep up with one’s 
neighbors. But few such places could surpass in en¬ 
semble the equal of a June morning-train scene at 
the up-town railway-station of Fond du Lac. 

Janeway was pacing this station platform alone 
on such a morning when Gertrude Durand’s car 
stopped near him, just as a Chicago train drew in. 
Kennedy, Gertrude, and Louise alighted from the 
motor. Janeway was in time to give both Gertrude 
and her guest his hand. The four walked directly 
to the train, which made no stops between Fond du 



GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 169 

Lac and Chicago, and was rapidly filling. In the 
parlor-cars they could find no seats together, and 
they retreated to the day coaches. The first one 
they entered was new, apparently just from the 
shops, and carrying that clean ‘freshness of the 
painter and the decorator that makes a railroad-car 
attractive with the fragrance of new plush and hard 
varnish. 

Janeway led the way into the coach. He paused 
before two empty seats. Louise, behind him, sat 
down next the window. Gertrude passed to the seat 
ahead and Kennedy followed her. Janeway stood 
in the aisle before Louise. “Is your brother on the 
train ?” 

“He went down last night.” 

“Then let me sit here,” he said, indicating the 
seat beside her. 

She half smiled at her situation, but said: “Do.” 

They talked of George. He had found newspaper 
work exacting, Louise told Janeway, but he liked it. 
The conversation presently halted. Then Louise 
turned from the window to Janeway, who knew how 
to hold his peace as well as how to talk. “I never 
knew, while I was away, what trouble George’s rad¬ 
icalism got him into with the government. And 
nothing, of course, of all you did to get him out of 
it.” 

“It wasn’t so much getting him out of it as keep¬ 
ing him out of it,” said Janeway. “George is nat¬ 
urally pugnacious, and it’s hard for him to keep still 
when it’s absolutely necessary to do so.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


170 

“It makes me the more indebted to you. I was 
going to call at your Chicago office this morning-” 

“Don’t make me sorry I met you.” 

“—to thank you and”—she was searching in her 
hand-bag—“to give you this.” 

With the words Louise handed him a cheque she 
had written out that morning. “You have been 
advising me,” she said, looking at him gravely, “and 
I haven’t given you any retainer. I asked Gertrude 
about it,” she went on, speaking rapidly, and as if a 
little fussed in carrying through her resolve, “and 
she said she thought about a thousand dollars would 
be right. Of course, I don’t know—and there are 
the other lawyers-” 

She paused for breath. Janeway looked gravely 
at the cheque in his hand, carefully drawn in one 
place for one thousand dollars and in the other for 
ten dollars. “Don’t worry about the other lawyers,” 
he said without a smile. “As long as you keep me 
in funds I will pacify them. Of course,” he added, 
in a matter-of-fact way, “I don’t usually accept re¬ 
tainers on the cars—I don’t often have a chance to; 
and in practice Kennedy handles the cash in our 
offices. This beats me out of a call from a highly 
esteemed client—one whose confidence I trust always 
to retain—but I must say that although you don’t 
owe me anything yet, it’s bad luck for a lawyer to 
refuse money. So I’ll accept this as your trustee.” 

Nearing Chicago, Gertrude and Kennedy joined 
in the conversation. Janeway asked them all to 
lunch with him. He suggested a favorite place of 





GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 


171 

his, a State Street hotel, famous in the history of 
Chicago, but one that fashion had long since passed 
up. Louise pleaded much to do and a noon-hour 
appointment for a fitting; she would lunch, when 
she could find time, at Field’s. Janeway kept right 
on. “Why can’t we all lunch there at your con¬ 
venience ? ” He looked at her with his appeal. She 
took alarm. Gertrude, not understanding, made 
light of her objections, but Janeway, better in¬ 
formed, abandoned his pursuit. It was not part of 
his design to harry Louise; rather he wished to pro¬ 
ceed only as she could reconcile herself to his ambi¬ 
tion. It was eventually agreed that if Louise could 
get through in time, she would join them at the 
hotel. 

“What in the world possesses you to come to this 
place for lunch, Mr. Janeway?” demanded Gertrude, 
when she was seated with Kennedy and Janeway in 
the large dining-room on the second floor of the hotel. 

“Wouldn’t an appetite be a reasonable excuse?” 
countered Janeway. 

“But”—she shrugged her shoulders—“I thought 
everybody lunched in Michigan Avenue nowadays.” 

“They do,” assented Janeway; “which is why I 
don’t. It was your uncle Sidney who gave me this 
habit. He used to come here when the place had a 
real landlord, and, knowing him, the Judge always 
kept it up. But think a minute. Where else could 
you find a dining-room like this?” He paused as 
Gertrude scrutinized the high ceiling, the amazing 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


172 

Victorian chandelier, and the horses frescoed in 
centrepiece. “It’s never hot in this room — it 
couldn’t be with a thirty-foot ceiling—though I 
really don’t know how high it is. But this hotel 
was built before money-making had been reduced 
to such an exact science. The rooms are large, the 
office large, the parlors wonderfully spacious—no 
modern hotel possesses these; ‘space’ means to them 
only a little more money to be squeezed out of the 
patron; so they crowd him in, with just enough 
room to turn around.” 

Gertrude was looking about her. “That sounds 
like Uncle Sid,” she smiled. 

“It is Uncle Sid,” agreed Janeway. “So I’ve 
learned to like this old place because of its associa¬ 
tions. It will never be what it was when Willis 
Howe ran it. But the important reason why I 
come here is, because I don’t have to talk to any¬ 
body. If I go to the club for lunch, I can’t avoid 
talking to some one—it may be an important client 
—when I want to rest or think. And if I go to a 
fashionable hotel, I’m shown to a grill in the cellar, 
where you can cut the smoke with a knife, or into a 
glaring dining-room filled with young blades, and 
small tables and society folk, not to mention cloak- 
and-suit salesmen entertaining feminine buyers. 
And I never can tell the society women from the 
other kind—they all look alike to me. The tables 
are set so close together, and with such a mathemati¬ 
cal eye to dividends, that you have to wriggle your 
way between them like an eel to a seat. Your neigh- 



GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 


173 

bors are rubbing your elbows or scraping your back; 
you must either listen to their talk or talk louder 
than they do, plus drowning the continual clatter of 
the music and the dishes. Worst of all, you are 
served by a nervous, high-strung Austrian, posing, 
poor fellow, as a Swiss, whose mind is so obsessed 
concerning his prospective tip that it makes you ner¬ 
vous yourself. As Jim puts it—there’s nothing to it.” 

“Especially,” interposed Jim, “to a man with a 
small income.” 

“Now, here,” continued Janeway, “see—the din¬ 
ing-room is well filled, yet you’re well apart from 
everybody. The colored waiters don’t hurry; a 
darky never hurries; they only pretend to hurry. 
It’s a pleasure to watch their bluff. In fact, every¬ 
thing here caters to a lazy man. 

“Besides, everybody here knows me. Robert, at 
the door, takes my hat with the deferential greeting 
of a well-mannered colored servant. He hands me 
my paper from his table and tells me it’s warm or 
cold or nice weather or stormy—really, half the time 
I shouldn’t know anything about the weather except 
for Robert. He never insults me by offering me an 
identification check for my hat and coat. Some¬ 
body stole one of my overcoats from him once. 
When I asked questions I learned Robert himself 
would have to pay—so I told him not to worry. 
Nobody should worry here. 

“But they know me. The head waiter always 
wants to know where / would like to sit—not where 
he can stick me. He never puts me too close to a 




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


174 

window in winter, nor too tar from one in summer. 
The darky that waits on me tells me what is par¬ 
ticularly good that day. The steward opens my 
oysters himself, or sees it done. I know his name; 
he knows mine; he has saved his money and is 
worth a hundred thousand dollars in Chicago real 
estate. You do the ordering, Jim.” 

Kennedy was due in court at two o’clock. Jane¬ 
way held Gertrude back even after he left the dining¬ 
room, talking of indifferent things, before releasing 
her to return to Field’s. With her at his side he 
walked in a leisurely way through the parlors to the 
elevators, and made her sit down with him. On the 
wall opposite them hung a painting by Gustave 
Bethune. It bore the title “Matinee Musicale.” 
A group of young women—five—were pictured in 
hats, veils, and wraps, seated at the matinee, the 
painter’s view-point so chosen that the five faces 
showed in three-quarter profile; Gertrude presently 
remarked on the excellence of the picture. 

“I’m glad you like it,” said Janeway. “ I often rest 
here a few moments to enjoy it. And knowing how 
innocent I am of design in what I do, you wouldn’t 
suspect I had a purpose in placing you here. But 
I wanted you to see that beautiful thing,” he con¬ 
tinued, “and tell you a story. Study for a minute 
the second face from the right. Does it look like 
any one you know?” 

Gertrude could not say that it did. 

“Sometimes, frequently, indeed, resemblances are 
lost on us until pointed out,” said Janeway, “par- 


GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 


175 

ticularly if we have no vital interest in the thing re¬ 
sembled. The reason why I sit here, Gertrude, as I 
often do of late, and study that group of lovely young 
Frenchwomen, is because the one I have indicated— 
the one that stands out most to me—looks like 
Louise!” 

Gertrude drew herself slowly up; she drew a cor¬ 
responding breath, tinctured with amazement, and, 
with her lips closed, turned to Janeway. He sat low 
and relaxed on the ample divan, his gaze bent calmly 
on the face preserved by the art of a master. There 
was nothing revealed in his manner. It was one of 
complete indifference to Gertrude’s complete sur¬ 
prise; he seemed rather busy with his thoughts. 
There was no embarrassment, no smile, no levity 
reflected in his face or bearing—only the most mat¬ 
ter-of-fact concentration. 

“ You’ll think,” he resumed, with Gertrude, 
flushed and suppressed, looking at him, but saying 
what he had to say with entire coolness, “ after my 
giving you so many reasons why I come to this place 
that the secret is out—and that this is the real rea¬ 
son. Yet I was, and am, perfectly honest in what 
I said. I did not think of the picture when I was 
explaining—yet it is quite possible that this is a sub¬ 
conscious reason—for, Gertrude, the simple truth is 
—I love Louise. 

“I want you to know it from me, because it’s fit¬ 
ting you should—and because, if you will give it to 
me, I shall need your help. I’ve a rocky road 
ahead-” 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


176 

“Does she know it?” burst out Gertrude. 

“She does. I’m the one in the dark yet. But I 
want you to know that my hands are clean. That’s 
old-fashioned, I know—but I’m old-fashioned and 
can’t seem to be anything else. The three years she 
was gone this magician often brought her back to 
me—she was in his country; and growing on me was 
the conviction—born of knowledge of her husband’s 
ways, that never again would Louise live with Rob¬ 
ert. I knew what he wanted—only to be rid of her. 
It was impossible for me to think she could continue 
to love him; I refused to countenance the idea. 

“Then she came back. You know how fast things 
have followed. I padlocked my lips, hung myself in 
chains, that I might not interfere with her decision 
as to what she should do. I don’t know her mind, 
or how much she divined, but she will bear me out 
in this—that never by word or by look, as far as I 
could control a look, have I tried to invade her 
heart; she herself could not say other than that. I 
sat here, in those days, with all that locked in my 
own heart—hoping, only hoping—no more. 

“Then came her decision to permit the divorce. 
After that I laid my plans to win as carefully as if 
my life were at stake—as it is. But nothing that I 
planned could I carry out. I used to envy you and 
Jim. with everything understood, and both so happy. 
I couldn’t get up the courage to speak to her—I was 
‘buffaloed.’ A dozen times I tried to make the op¬ 
portunity and failed—and felt like a fool in the 
failing. 




GERTRUDE ASTONISHED 


177 

“ But one day I met her at your uncle’s. She was 
going down to the swamp after cattails-” 

“That day!” exclaimed Gertrude. 

“That day,” echoed Janeway, unperturbed. “I 
looked at her,” he continued, “as she told her uncle 
what she was going to do. I wanted to go with her. 
She would not let me. But as she walked away 
from us, I said to myself: ‘Louise, before you come 
back, you shall hear and know everything.’ And 
she did.” 

“What did she say?” asked Gertrude, struggling 
with her excitement. 

Janeway did not speak at once. He was gazing 
at the face in the picture. “She said,” he answered, 
“there was nothing doing. Since that day, more 
than once I have sat here, before this presentment 
of her—sat here in this sordid atmosphere of de¬ 
praved men and debased women—you know what 
they are—the kind that haunt these public places 
—and thought of this woman. I know men and 
women. I have studied her every minute I’ve been 
in her presence—lain awake thinking of just what 
she said and just how she said it. 

“And I want such a woman as she is. I want 
her,” he said, “just to stretch out her hand to me!” 





CHAPTER XV 


LOUISE SPEAKS 

Too astonished at the unexpected confidence to col¬ 
lect her thought into coherent phrases, Gertrude sat 
silent. 

“I ask you,” Janeway went on, “for a sympathetic 
attitude, in so far as I may seem to deserve it. I’ve 
just the feeling that Louise knows me much less 
than I know her, that’s all. And my difficulties 
may come through the merest misapprehensions on 
her part, misapprehensions I could correct if I knew 
them. The trouble is, she might never confide them 
to me. But you or Jim might correct them merely 
by challenging them. I bring no false pretenses to 
my effort to win her— What is it?” Gertrude 
had started and was looking responsively at him. 

“I did challenge one,” she answered fast and im¬ 
pulsively. “She said Bob told her, almost when 
you first met Louise, that Mrs. Montgomery was a 
friend of yours—that you had known her for years, 
and that you introduced her to Bob.” 

Janeway squirmed like a trapped animal. His 
face flushed, almost to Gertrude’s alarm. “That’s 
outrageous ! ” he exclaimed, struggling with his anger. 

“I was perfectly sure it wasn’t so.” 

“Truth and falsehood mixed in precisely the most 

178 


LOUISE SPEAKS 


I 79 

poisonous proportions/’ he continued doggedly. “I 
have known that woman for years; yet I don’t sup¬ 
pose I’ve exchanged a dozen words with her in as 
many years—not even since Bob picked her up. I 
never knew he was acquainted with‘her till he tried 
to introduce me to her! If Louise believes that! 
Perhaps she does,” he said moodily. 

“She doesn’t unless she disbelieves me.” 

“The human mind is a queer thing; once a doubt 
is instilled it sometimes takes a lot of work to eradi¬ 
cate it.” 

He fumed in his exasperation all the way down to 
Field’s, whither he walked with Gertrude, leaving 
her at the Washington Street entrance, and return¬ 
ing thence to his office in Adams Street. The tele¬ 
phone operator reported that Judge Harrison had 
called from Fond du Lac and had asked to be called 
back; she got a connection shortly, and Janeway 
spoke to the Judge on the wire. 

“About this strike, Henry,” said Harrison. “The 
men have gone out.” 

“Well, Judge,” returned Janeway, “I’ve ‘gone 
out,’ myself, thank God. So there’s nothing up to 
me.” 

Judge Harrison did not give way. “Something’s 
got to be done,” he said gravely, “or we may have 
civil war here in forty-eight hours. Bob is bringing 
in detectives and strike-breakers. I’ve got an arbi¬ 
tration committee, a good one, one that will work, 
arranged with the men’s grievance committee. But 
it calls for Marion. The men won’t accept a com- 


i8o 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


mittee without him, and he refuses to act. This 
isn’t your funeral, Henry, but as a favor to me— 
perhaps to avert bloodshed as well—I want you to 
urge the Bishop to accept the chairmanship of this 
committee.” 

“And have Bob Durand double-cross me again?” 
interposed Janeway grimly. 

“There will be nothing whatever of that, Henry. 
This responsibility is mine. The only reason I drag 
you in is because you can do more than any one else 
with Bishop Marion—you are probably the only 
man in all the circumstances that can persuade him 
it’s his duty to act. And that if he acts it will be 
effective. I’ve been up all night with the men’s 
committee. I know their minds-” 

“ What about Durand ? What will he do ? ” 

Judge Harrison’s teeth clicked over the wire. 
That click was a familiar sound to Jane way. “Damn 
him!” snorted the Judge. “He’ll do as I tell him, 
or I’ll quit him cold. I’m not going to see our 
plants blown up again or turned into a shambles 
for forty Bobs. He’ll listen to reason, or I’ll break 
him. I’ve done everything I can. If you’ll do 
what you can—as a civic duty—and urge the Bishop 
to put aside personal feeling and do what he can, we 
shall avoid what Lee used to call ‘ useless effusion of 
blood.’ 

“But it’s really past a joke, Henry. There never 
was a time in Fond du Lac when men needed more 
to keep their heads—and work hard to get other 
men to keep their heads—as much as now. Will 



LOUISE SPEAKS 181 

you decide? Or will you think it over and call me 
soon?” 

“If I can get an appointment,” answered Janeway, 
greatly to Judge Harrison’s surprise, “ HI see the 
Bishop to-night.” 

“That is very kind, Henry; though hardly less 
than I expected. Anyway, get an early train and 
see me first.” 

Janeway called that night on Bishop Marion at 
his residence at eight o’clock. He laid Harrison’s 
plea before him, coupling with it his own view of the 
matter, namely, that for the Bishop it was a call 
to public duty. Bishop Marion’s objections were 
gradually reduced to one. “Mr. Durand will never 
agree to an arbitration board with me for chair¬ 
man.” 

Janeway leaned forward in his chair. “I am au¬ 
thorized, Bishop, to say to you that Mr. Durand will 
agree to you. Judge Harrison represents a power¬ 
ful minority interest in the corporation; Durand dare 
not break with him; and he pledges himself to bring 
his nephew into line.” 

“In that case,” said Bishop Marion, “it will be a 
duty to contribute any service I can to the adjust¬ 
ment of this quarrel; and you may so inform those 
at interest, Mr. Janeway.” 

They were seated up-stairs in the Bishop’s library, 
which was likewise his office and den; a wood-fire in 
the grate relieved the chill of the evening. 

Both men were smoking. Janeway looked around 


182 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

at the cases of books. “You have a large library, 
Bishop.” 

“Bishops, like lawyers, are condemned—when not 
inclined—to much reading. You yourself have been 
a wide reader, I am told.” 

“Who told you?” 

“Well, Judge Harrison, for one; Mr. Simms, 
too.” 

“By the way, is Simms a Roman Catholic?” 

“In the sense that he was baptized one. I’m 
afraid,” added the Bishop, with a patient smile, 
“Mr. Simms now falls more nearly into the category 
of roaming Catholics.” 

“Having been baptized one makes him a member, 
I suppose?” 

“Having been baptized fixes his status for all 
time.” 

“Does it make as much difference as that?” 

“It certainly makes a vital difference.” 

“With any one?” 

“With any one.” 

“Man or woman?” 

“With any human being; but we don’t use the 
word ‘member’ precisely as you, in your churches, 
use and understand it.” 

“Why do you say ‘my churches’?” 

“I speak to you as one coming in youth, at least, 
from any one of several churches.” 

Janeway led the talk, quite in a natural way, back 
to the well-laden shelves. “Baptism,” he echoed 
irrelevantly. “What have you over there?” he 


LOUISE SPEAKS 183 

asked, indicating certain precise rows of rather for¬ 
midable-looking volumes. 

“ Chiefly moral theology.” 

Janeway mused a moment, or seemed to, for he 
was not precisely as somnolent-minded as he ap¬ 
peared. “They must in some sort resemble the 
tomes that excited Matthew Arnold’s interest in the 
British Museum.” 

“You remember, then, his comment.” 

“Some one has told me—or I’ve read—that your 
Church has paid particular attention to that science. 
It’s a large subject.” 

“It embraces a vast range of what you lawyers 
call ‘case law,’ and what our critics reproach us with 
as casuistry—though casuistry is nothing more than 
cases of conscience that have cropped up for cen¬ 
turies, and will continue to crop up until the end of 
time. You know how your court decisions pile up 
into whole libraries every year.” 

“Moral theology covers the relations of the sexes, 
doesn’t it?” 

“All of that and much more.” 

“Everything that can be, should be coded.” 

The Bishop pointed to another row of books. 
“There, as it happens, is a quite new codification of 
the canon law of the Church.” 

Janeway asked questions. He learned that the 
volumes were only recently off the press, and was 
told how long and at whose instance the committee 
charged with the task had been at work. “Take 
the question of marriage,” instanced the Bishop. 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


184 

“ Material changes, affecting the status of marriage in 
this country, have been newly set forth in accordance 
with late papal decrees, such as the Ne Temere .” 

Janeway had finally reached, almost without ef¬ 
fort, the one question to which he had been leading 
his unsuspecting host. He rose and, crossing the 
room, stood before the formal tomes that held in 
their voluminous depths the answer to everything 
that life seemed now to hold for him, and his mind 
worked as he studied their appearance. 

“Dm curious to make some acquaintance with 
an ecclesiastical code,” he remarked impassively. 
“Which of these volumes bears on marriage? I 
wonder,” he added, while the Bishop opened the 
bookcase doors, “if you would lend me one.” 

“Unless you are fresh in your classics,” assented 
the Bishop, laying a volume in his hand, “you might 
find these difficult; they are in Latin, you see.” 

Janeway scanned the pages open before him with 
disappointment. “That would undeniably be a dif¬ 
ficulty,” he said. “Why are they in Latin? Are 
there no translations?” 

“When you reflect that the Church is universal, 
you will realize the necessity of a statute language, a 
supreme-court language, that will answer anywhere 
in the world, to men of every tongue. And as a 
lawyer, you will appreciate the undeniable advan¬ 
tage of using as a medium for official pronounce¬ 
ments a dead language, because in a dead language 
the meaning of words remains fixed; it never changes. 
And if you knew what grievous blows Christianity 


LOUISE SPEAKS 185 

has suffered because Christians could not or would 
not agree upon the precise meaning of words, you 
would say: stick to the unchanging. 

“But there are translations. Poss'ibly this entire 
code is not translated into English; parts of it are; 
digests are variously made into the vernacular, cov¬ 
ering portions most needed for reference. I’ll see— 
if you are interested-” 

Janeway eyed the Bishop calmly. “I am inter¬ 
ested,” he echoed. 

“I will look up what I can find for you on mar¬ 
riage. It is, I suppose,” said the Bishop, with 
method now on his own part, “for a bachelor purely 
an academic question?” 

“Not purely,” replied Janeway. “And even then, 
you know,” he added, half smiling, “an academic 
question may change, at the slightest provocation, 
into a burning one.” 

He went back to his apartment, filled with only 
one idea, namely, that he must see Louise as soon 
as possible. But how to do it. Attentions that 
might lead any one to suspect his feelings toward her 
would, he felt sure, not now, at any rate, please her. 

He spent wakeful hours trying to figure out how 
he should manage. But a false impression had been 
fixed in her mind and must be corrected at once. 
The slightest feeling of distrust on her part would 
void all effort on his, and Gertrude had, he felt 
sure, given him the clew to one, and perhaps the only 
cause Louise had for distrusting him. 



i86 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


He did not go to Chicago next day. He decided 
to play golf, and going out at about eleven o'clock, 
with only a favorite caddy to talk to wiien he wanted 
to talk, he spent his working hours at the club, set¬ 
tling, meantime, his mind to telephone Louise and 
ask to call. 

To his secret delight Gertrude, while he was lunch¬ 
ing, walked past the door of the club dining-room 
with Louise herself. He tried to get them for lunch¬ 
eon, but they had lunched. “If you won’t lunch, 
will you invite me to go ’round with you ? ” he asked, 
without much hesitation. 

“Louise will,” volunteered Gertrude. “I’m going 
to take a lesson before I start.” 

“Why, Gertrude!” protested her companion. 
“You never said a w r ord about a lesson! You 
dragged me out here to w r alk around with you.” 

“Yes, but I must have a lesson first, and mean¬ 
time you can play nine holes with Mr. Janew r ay.” 

Louise w r ould not play. She had not had a club 
in her hand for three years, and had no idea of play¬ 
ing. Janew r ay obligingly took the matter of find¬ 
ing the professional for Gertrude out of the hands 
of an attendant. He saw the man himself and ar¬ 
ranged with him for the longest golf lesson on rec¬ 
ord. Louise protested she wrould not keep Janewray 
from playing, and that she w r ould sit and w r atch the 
lesson. Janewray asked no more than permission to 
rest awrhile after the morning round. Gertrude 
looked at him maliciously, and suggested he needed 
exercise after eating. But Janewray declared he 


LOUISE SPEAKS 


187 

could be as stubborn as other people, and told them 
bluntly they should not so easily be rid of him. He 
excused himself only long enough to call up Ken¬ 
nedy at the Fond du Lac office and'tell him to come 
out and play a round with Gertrude. 

“You said you were going to be gone all day,” 
objected Kennedy. 

“I may be back earlier than I thought. Any¬ 
way,” said Janeway, in a tone that Kennedy never 
questioned, “never mind the office—come out.” 

He rejoined Louise and the two watched the les¬ 
son. Gertrude complained presently that a gallery 
made her nervous, and asked hers to retire. 

“I’ve been wanting very much to have a talk with 
you,” said Janeway, walking with Louise back to 
the club-house terrace. “For once in my life Fve 
been too honest.” 

“How so?” 

“In saying you need make no more trips to the 
office I’ve cut oh all opportunity of seeing you with¬ 
out leaving it to chance, or getting leave to call on 
you. And as I know you don’t want to see me, I’m 
reduced to chance alone. But I wouldn’t have had 
you come to the office one time more than necessary 
—for I know how unpleasant that necessity has been 
—if I had to wait a year to see you.” 

“It isn’t quite right to say I don’t want to see 
you—as if that were not pleasant. It’s only that I 
don’t want to talk about what isn’t possible—and 
what, I am sure, would be a sad mistake if it were 
possible,” said Louise gravely. They sat down at a 




i88 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


terrace refreshment table well apart from other ta¬ 
bles. “Let us be good friends/’ she urged quietly, 
“and put all else aside.” 

Jane way squirmed. His head and shoulders 
swayed slowly from side to side as he gradually filled 
his capacious chest with breath. His head settled 
back proudly, while his stubborn face presented a 
perfect picture of defiance of the court. 

It was almost all lost on Louise. She had fixed 
her eyes on the golf-course. If perhaps a little of 
Janeway’s attitude was reflected in the penumbra of 
her vision, she was the less prepared for his imme¬ 
diate assent. 

“To be able to claim a friendship with you would 
be an asset in any man’s life,” he said. “I would 
rather be such a friend—if I might only be with you 
—than the husband of any other woman,” he con¬ 
tinued calmly; though had Louise known him better 
she would have remarked that his voice changed 
oddly as he spoke, and most judges in Fond du Lac 
could have told her that this meant more was com¬ 
ing. “However, even friendship,” he went on, as 
disinterestedly as a professional adviser, “to be a 
friendship, must be free from doubts and misappre¬ 
hensions. Let a friendship between a man and a 
woman be based, I should say, on understanding and 
confidence.” 

She turned to look at him, perplexed but resolved. 
“I perhaps ought to say to you,” she returned, 
“just what I feel.” Her eyes were frank and clear, 
but they were also cold. 


LOUISE SPEAKS 


189 

He met the challenge evenly. “ There is no other 
way/’ he remarked, “to reach any sort of friend¬ 
ship. ^ 

Louise was beginning to have an uncomfortable 
impression that in her effort to let him down easy 
she was holding out her own hands for his persuasive 
gyves. Her instinct already warned her that this 
man would lead her again into forbidden places. 

“I’ve no faith in men,” she said abruptly, and 
with her eyes, still quite unafraid, on his. 

“I haven’t much, myself,” he assented. “Of 
course,” he added, “what you say isn’t really true, 
as would be easy to prove to you. But,” he con¬ 
tinued, with tantalizing reassurance, “I know what 
you mean; indeed, I have very little myself. 

“But that we may be friends”—the word sounded 
now almost ominous to Louise—“that we may be 
friends, let misapprehensions be done with. There 
is no good reason I know of why you shouldn’t have 
the faith of a friend in me. I said to Gertrude only 
the other day I felt that somehow I knew you much 
better than you knew me. It’s natural it should be 
so. Your mind is a very open one; you think and 
speak with singleness of purpose. I can’t always do 
that—no man can in dealing with men. I’m not 
doing it even now, as you vaguely realize and I well 
know. But this much believe of me—whenever I 
do speak to you, no matter in what roundabout way 
I may choose to travel—I’m forbidden, you know, 
to walk straight—there is always one underlying mo¬ 
tive—consideration for you; respect, reverence, de- 





THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


190 

votion—whatever you please to call it—the letters 
in each case spell only— you! So, to resume: I’ve 
sometimes thought—more recently—that this very 
woman who has clouded all our horizons may have 
been the cause of some of your distrust of me. Your 
husband would, naturally, perhaps, tell you that I 
knew her. It would be true; I have known her for 
years. In a town of this size twenty years ago every 
one knew every one else. She was quite bright 
enough. I was fond of skating as a young man.” 

“I’ve heard you were a champion.” 

“ Among the blind the one-eyed are kings. She 
was a very little girl—possibly ten—and I twenty. 
She asked me to teach her to skate, and as I was very 
vain, I willingly did. Very soon—in a season or 
two—she skated better than I skated. I never saw 
her to speak to except as a child at the old skating- 
rink, or as I passed her in the street afterward. I 
never exchanged a dozen words with her after she 
was fifteen years old. And I never saw or heard of 
her after she married, when quite young, a dry-goods 
merchant, until Durand, with Mr. and Mrs. Simms, 
introduced her to me one evening at a Chicago club. 
I just wanted you,” he said in conclusion, “to know 
the facts—I wanted to clear my skirts of ever hav¬ 
ing been instrumental in any way in making her ac¬ 
quainted with any one—him least of all.” 

“And now—I am told,” said Louise quietly, “he 
is to marry her.” 

“For God’s sake, let him!” blurted out Jane¬ 
way. “Cruel and unusual punishments were in- 


LOUISE SPEAKS 


191 

vented for cases such as his. Yet,” he added re¬ 
signedly, “it seems that by men like him all men are 
to be judged. However, no man is willing to be 
judged—in this case it is equivalent to being hanged 
—without a protest. And you know now all that 
was in my mind when I said: ‘Don’t oppose this 
wretched man’s suit; be free.’ 

“ I saw you his wife; he my business associate. But 
even then I’d have broken every bond of society, 
of convention, without a scruple—I’d have declared 
myself, pleaded, threatened, fought, and won or lost, 
had you been any woman other than you are. I 
wanted more than once to speak plainly—you’ve 
forgotten those days.” 

“I’ve not forgotten. Nor have I forgotten that 
a few moments ago you were to put all that 
aside.” 

He bowed his head; then he looked at her with 
droll humor. 

“Deacon Tibbetts used to try to impress on us in 
Sunday-school that we must forgive our enemies. I 
practised it faithfully. I found I could easily for¬ 
give my enemies. But they wouldn’t stay forgiven; 
I never could get the recipe for keeping them for¬ 
given. One day they’d be forgiven and the next 
day they wouldn’t. 

“That’s going to be my trouble in being a good 
friend—part of the time I’m going to be fine at it. 
But I shall look to you”—he ventured to raise peni¬ 
tent eyes as he lowered his voice half a tone—“to 
remind me when I slip.” 





THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


192 

Her silence, as she looked out on the course, was 
not reassuring; yet he pushed doggedly on. “I was 
only recalling old days,” he urged. “ Surely, mem¬ 
ories are not taboo. I remember there was one dan¬ 
gerous moment one night in your dining-room—that 
was a beautiful room, by the way—Durand, and 
his friends, and this woman—and stories and 
drinks-” 

“As always-” 

“You said something to me—I’ve racked my 
brains a thousand times to remember your exact 
words, but I was too wildly excited at the confidence 
to fasten them in my mind—it was about hating it 
all and wishing you were away from it. I said: ‘I 
hate it, too. Let’s get away from it.’ If you had 
risen at that moment from your chair—stepped then 
with me out of that room—it would all have been 
over. Instead of that, you silenced me.” 

“You frightened me,” she said, in frigid retort. 

“I must have realized it, for some instinct held 
me back from forcing words on you. I felt I should 
lose.” 

He saw how, in spite of herself, she was stirred. 
“You would have lost,” she said coldly. 

He closed one hand. “I knew it. Yet I hoped 
then—that if you could ever know me as I wanted 
to be known, you would learn to like me a little. 
But you have no word.” 

“I am done with responses—as I am with ap¬ 
peals.” 

Janeway took the verdict without resentment. 




LOUISE SPEAKS 


193 

“You mean/’ he replied simply, “you don’t be¬ 
lieve me.” 

“I did not say that,” she exclaimed petulantly. 

“But you meant it.” 

“And if I did believe you, it could make no possi¬ 
ble difference.” 

He spoke the gentlest of protests. “No possible 
difference? Louise, if you believed me, it would 
change this gray sky into a burst of sunshine—this 
dead landscape into a place of enchantment—roses 
would spring out of these stones—if you believed 
me!” 

He watched her as a fowler might watch a bird- 
struggling in his snare. She could not bear the 
strain. “I hope you don’t realize,” she said, with 
a quick effort, “how cruel all this is. But, no doubt, 
you can be as cruel as other men.” 

Janeway hung his head. He clasped one hand 
tightly in the other. “I’m afraid I can,” he con¬ 
fessed. “ Only, try to remember I’m fighting for my 
life.” 

“And I,” she returned steadily, “for mine. When 
my mother lay on her death-bed Robert Durand 
asked to marry me. I refused him. He persisted— 
as you are persisting. Yet,” she added, as if with 
sudden recollection, “why should I couple you in 
anything with that man ? 

“He turned my head with his protests—swept me 
off my feet with his violence. I wasn’t to consent— 
I wasn’t to think—I was just to be the idol of his 
heart!” 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


194 

She stopped for strength. “What sport!” she 
continued, when she could speak, framing each word 
with the bitterness of her awakening, “what sport 
we poor wretches are for the little holiday of men 
like Robert Durand! 

“Even then I might have escaped—but while I 
resisted—and wavered—my poor mother urged me, 
begged me for her sake—leaving me, as she was, 
alone in the world—to marry him. 

“Shall I tell you what my picture of marriage 
was ? ” The words, refusing now to be stilled, poured 
in a flood from her lips. “It was of walking in flow¬ 
ers and veil, in the silence of guests and to the 
strains of music, up to the altar. That was all I 
ever knew or pictured of marriage! You’ve seen 
something of my enlightenment!” She paused as 
if to escape the shackles of a dreaded memory. 

“After the armistice,” she went on disconnectedly, 
“I broke. I went back to Italy. There I fell ill. 
I’ve never told you this. I was ill for a very long 
time. It was then that nobody heard from me. 
And I owe my life to Virginia Hampton, that brave 
little Southern woman I served with in France. She 
nursed me back to life. God knows I didn’t want 
to live. It is she alone—not the great doctors, not 
the great specialists—who is responsible for my being 
here now. 

“She knew nothing of despair—but she knew how 
to minister to it. I knew nothing of religion. Sit¬ 
ting night after night with me when I couldn’t sleep 
—when I begged for some drug that would give me 


LOUISE SPEAKS 


195 

a last sleep—she told me of her Christianity. I was 
there—in Rome—with its beginnings under my feet. 
She gave me courage to live—she taught me humility 
in place of rebellion—she taught me hejr faith. When 
I went up to Switzerland—at Geneva—I took it for 
my own.” 

“ You’ve taken a faith that I more than once 
thought must make a strong appeal to a woman’s 
heart.” 

“What I have done,” she hurried desperately on, 
“puts behind me all thought of remarrying. For 
me remarriage is impossible.” 

“I am by no means so sure about that.” 

“Because you’re not a Catholic.” 

“You haven’t been one very long. I know the 
great Church is very strict. All I feel sure of is that 
her laws are not against reason nor against justice. 
All I need to know from you is this: what you, your¬ 
self, would say if you found yourself free. I know 
now—I realize it since you have told me all—that 
you are still weak from your long illness—for I know 
you would belittle even that. But only—give me a 
chance!” 

He could see how difficult it was for her to control 
herself, how difficult it was for her as she spoke. 
“I long ago put aside all thought of another mar¬ 
riage. But I had once said to myself”—she paused 
for strength and words—“once I did think—that the 
only man I had ever met that I felt I could respect 
and like never could really care for me in the way— 
a woman—wants to be cared for-” 






THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


196 

A single word rose in exclamation to his lips. 
But it was freighted with all the hope, all the ten¬ 
derness, of a waiting heart. “ Louise!” 

“And now—too late—he comes into my life!” 



CHAPTER XVI 
AT THE BAZAAR - 

For the days preceding Gertrude’s bazaar, Louise 
diverted her mind from her difficulties by training 
her energies in with those of Gertrude in preparation 
for it. Amazed a little at times at Gertrude’s being 
so completely engrossed in the minor difficulties and 
vexations incident to such affairs, Louise could only 
reflect that when we lack real troubles imaginary 
ones serve as our retainers. 

The grounds of Gertrude’s old home had long been 
modernized and offered an excellent setting for a 
garden bazaar. And the weather, for once, as Ger¬ 
trude almost grumbled, smiled on her labors. And 
her society friends, for once, as she added, responded 
to her appeal—the affair went well. 

By the time Kennedy got out late from the city, 
to put in an early afternoon appearance, Gertrude’s 
face was wreathed with smiles. He found her in the 
living-room, meeting guests. Of course, he did not 
escape without some upbraiding. 

“Couldn’t make it any sooner, honey,” he pleaded 
shamelessly. “Court. How’s your party?” 

“Why, it’s nearly over, Jim.” 

“Is Henry Dunning Janeway here?” 

“He is. And having a good time. Louise is out 
there making the poor man spend all his money. I 
hope if Bob comes the two won’t clash.” 

197 


198 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

“Never fear. Simms claims that Bob bearded 
the lion in his office den that morning after the riot. 
If he actually did, I hope Brother won’t feel the 
royal beast’s claws in his domestic and financial giz¬ 
zard before they’re through.” He scrutinized her 
rig as he spoke. “Well, baby girl! Some class to 
the little gown.” 

“Do you like it?” 

“Do you wear it?” 

“I do.” 

“I do.” 

Gertrude glanced through the open doors of the 
terrace out at the gardens. Her guests circulated 
among the booths. “Mrs. Montgomery,” she said 
incidentally, “hasn’t come yet.” 

“What did you invite her for, honey?” 

“Bob made me, of course.” 

“Dear Brother!” 

“I told him it was a public affair, but he was 
stubborn. I think she made him ask for a special 
bid. She’s so sensitive, he says.” 

“Mother o’ mine ! Why was I not born sensitive? 
I might have married a steel magnate myself!” 

“When I did invite her,” continued Gertrude, 
“she said she didn’t know whether I really wanted 
her to come or not.” 

“She must be a detective,” hinted Kennedy. 

“Awfully frank, I thought.” 

“It isn’t Maymie’s practice to conceal—much.” 

“Jim, I hate double entendre .” 

“That’s only just plain United States entendre . 


AT THE BAZAAR 


199 

Are you still game, birdie mine, for going ahead and 
getting married, no matter what Brother thinks ? ” 

Gertrude looked at him with Durand determina¬ 
tion. “I ordered my travelling suit to-day; it’s going 
to be a dear. What will Bob say?” she sighed. 

“What he’ll say would probably put him in jail 
if it got into the mails. And by the great Jehovah, 
there she is, on the terrace with Brother, right now. 
Didn't I tell you, Gertie, she wouldn’t hide anything 
you could speak of?” 

Mrs. Montgomery, under Durand’s protecting 
wing, was, in fact, crossing the terrace toward the 
living-room. 

A painstaking selection of beauty parlors kept 
Mrs. Montgomery in condition. She was perhaps 
just overgroomed, but her confident step w r as justi¬ 
fied by the lack of noticeable encroachments that 
three years had made on her appearance. The 
family quarrels that had agitated the Durand circle 
on her threatened entrance into it, had left her un¬ 
scathed by worries; no wrinkles had invaded her 
pleading eyes; she asked only for sympathy and for¬ 
bearance. The worst that could be said of Maymie 
Montgomery was that she was happy and wanted 
everybody else to be happy, which Kennedy pro¬ 
nounced fair enough; forgetting that happiness is a 
joint-stock liability concern, in which neither man 
nor woman, neither husband nor wife, neither parent 
nor child can be selfish without making somebody, 
somewhere, pay the price in tears. 

“I thought you were never coming!” exclaimed 


200 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Gertrude, when her brother and Mrs. Montgomery 
entered the room. 

11 D ear girl! ’ ’ murmured Mrs. Montgomery. ‘ ‘ Are 
you dead?’’ 

“Dead?” echoed Kennedy, as the greetings were 
exchanged. “Well, I hope not—yet.” 

Mrs. Montgomery wore white. Her figure, with a 
tendency to plumpness, was under control, and 
though her utterances were at times stern, her voice 
was pleasant. “I’m so late,” she apologized, with 
real regret, “and it’s all the fault of this tyrannical 
brother of yours.” She was addressing Gertrude. 

“Of ours , Mrs. Montgomery,” interposed Ken¬ 
nedy. “You can’t lose me in this family.” 

“See here a minute, Kennedy,” said Durand, 
stepping away for a side confab. 

Mrs. Montgomery, studying Gertrude’s gown with 
a critical eye—a study in which Gertrude, herself, 
was not at all behind—resumed complacently: 
“Isn’t Mr. Kennedy ‘inimicable ’ ? ” 

Kennedy was just near enough to overhear. 
“What’s that?” he asked, starting. 

Mrs. Montgomery pushed him away with her fan. 
“Listeners never hear any good of themselves.” 
Then to Gertrude. “You’ve had a perfect crush, 
Gertrude, haven’t you? I’ve never seen such a 
stream of cars up and down the hill. You must 
have sent out a raft of invitations.” 

“Why, I didn’t send out any. It’s public. I 
couldn’t exclude anybody from a children’s hospital 
benefit.” 



AT THE BAZAAR 


201 


“Fortunate for me!” purred Mrs. Montgomery. 

Gertrude was mildly shocked. “Mrs. Montgom¬ 
ery ! I don’t understand! Would any one in Fond 
du Lac dream of leaving you out?” 

“Dear girl! You know very well my position is 
a difficult one. But Bob ! You know how he is; he 
simply must have his own way—don’t blame me, 
dear, for all of it. And I hear Louise is very, very 
sweet. But when two people can’t live happily to¬ 
gether, it’s really a crime to make them—don’t you 
think so? Yet I certainly sympathize with her.” 
Gertrude was too hot to retort. She felt if she said 
anything it would be too much. 

Durand, who was talking to Kennedy about the 
arbitration committee, was not holding him. Ken¬ 
nedy turned at the last words to Mrs. Montgomery. 
“Come right out into the garden, Mrs. Montgom¬ 
ery. We need sympathizers. Poor Gertrude had 
yesterday eighty-seven babies to feed—you may go 
as far as you like.” 

Mrs. Montgomery had an indulgent smile for her 
prospective brother-in-law. “Lovely! ” she drawled, 
turning again to Gertrude. 

“They had the prettiest things in the booths,” 
suggested Gertrude encouragingly, “if they’re not 
all gone. Run along and I’ll join you in a min¬ 
ute.” 

Mrs. Montgomery walked happily away with Ken¬ 
nedy. “Isn’t Gertrude dear?” she smiled. 

‘Just like her brother,” suggested Kennedy 
blandly. The touch was not lost on his companion. 


202 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Don’t say mean things/’ she objected. “ You’re 
not a bit nice to me.” 

“I must be the only man in town that isn’t.” 

“ There you go again. But I want to tell you , Jim 
Kennedy—and I never get the chance—that instead 
of my trying to influence Bob against Gertrude’s 
marrying you-” 

“I never said you did.” 

“I’ve tried to make him give in.” 

“Does he do it?” 

“Like a mule.” 

“You mustn’t call Brother names.” 

Maymie tossed her head. “He doesn’t hesitate 
to call me names; why, he even had the nerve to tell 
me if I hadn’t any manners I might copy some from 
his wife—wouldn’t that kill you ? Maybe he’s get¬ 
ting tired of Maymie. But I ain’t afraid of him.” 

“No more am I,” chimed in Kennedy. “Come 
on! You and I’ll be pals yet.” 

Gertrude was talking with her brother. “ When 
did you get back, Bob ? ” 

“Day before yesterday. I haven’t had time to 
think yet. This infernal strike-” 

“But that’s going to be settled now.” 

“Settled!” snapped her brother. “Settled—with 
that man Marion running the committee! A fine 
show we’ll have! My brave uncle is responsible for 
shoving that down my throat. He’s got about as 
much fight in him as a sparrow. I think Janeway 
had a hand in it.” 






AT THE BAZAAR 


203 

“Bob, why worry about what can’t be helped? 
Why wear out your health and strength fighting all 
the time. My heavens!” Gertrude paused to let 
her words sink in. “Haven’t you got-money enough, 
no matter what happens now ? More than you ever 
dreamed of having ? What do you care whether the 
strikers get a dollar a day more or not?” 

Her brother looked no less saturnine. “I don’t 
like committees unning my business. I don’t like 
to be beaten, either. I’ll get even with the whole 
bunch yet.” 

Durand’s eyes, never quite still, were roving as he 
spoke; as if nothing within vision was to be lost. 
They now fixed on a couple at some distance on the 
driveway, below the lotus ponds. Durand recog¬ 
nized Janeway. This in itself would have annoyed 
him. But he looked also at the person standing 
with the man he regarded as his enemy. Her back 
was toward him, and he was trying to make out 
whether it was a young girl or a woman talking with 
the man he detested. Whoever it was, her figure, 
very satisfying in its lines, gave him no clew; it might 
have belonged either to a young girl or a woman of 
twenty-five. While Durand’s eyes were on them, 
Janeway’s vis-a-vis turned from him, apparently 
with some excuse, and tripped up a short flight of 
steps and through the pergola, where girls were serv¬ 
ing tea. 

Janeway, looking after the slight figure until it 
disappeared, stood until two bazaar salesgirls, com¬ 
ing up, claimed his attention. 


204 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“ What’s Janeway doing here ? ” demanded Durand 
gruffly of his sister. 

“ Spending his money, I hope,” retorted Gertrude, 
undisturbed. “What should anybody be doing 
here?” 

“I don’t like this idea of Louise’s staying here 
with you,” said Durand shortly. “ Who’s that going 
up-stairs?” 

Gertrude looked around; she knew her brother’s 
different tones so well that she knew when he was 
interested. And she saw through the open French 
doors of the terrace the feminine figure that had ar¬ 
rested Durand’s attention when his eye had caught 
Janeway. Gertrude suppressed a laugh. “What is 
it?” asked Durand testily. “What’re you laughing 
at?” 

She regarded him as if not quite sure of his good 
faith. “Don’t you know your own wife when you 
see her?” 

The figure disappeared on the mezzanine. “Was 
that Louise?” he demanded. 

Gertrude was still laughing. “It certainly was.” 

“Some style!” murmured Durand, still looking 
toward the stairs. 

“Hasn’t she?” commented Gertrude maliciously. 
“Uncle Sid said she was the best-looking, the best- 
dressed woman at the Horse Show last week.” 

“Paris has given her an air,” he snapped. 

“Paris won’t give you an air unless it’s in you to 
begin with. Louise always had an air; you never 
realized it. Her figure is more rounded and her 
cheeks are fuller. There she comes again.” 


AT THE BAZAAR 


205 

The brother and sister were standing where they 
could see without being seen. Louise, purse in hand, 
was fairly tripping down the hall stairs. She crossed 
the terrace quickly and disappeared among the 
guests. 

“Bob, you’ve cast off the best woman that ever 
came into your life,” said Gertrude indignantly. 
She knew her brother’s face and knew how the change 
in his wife had taken his breath. Physical feminine 
beauty made an appeal to Durand that nothing else 
in the world could quite equal, and, like all men of 
his temperament, he was usually a failure in choosing 
women. 

“No use talking about that now,” he growled. 

“That’s what every man says when he’s ashamed 
of himself.” 

“I’m no parson. Louise knew that when she 
married me.” 

“That’s not true.” 

“Her mother knew, anyway.” 

“And you’ve lost the best business adviser you 
ever had. When you were afraid to spend such an 
awful sum to rebuild the mills, who made you do it 
—and with her money, too!” 

“I never said she didn’t have a good head for busi¬ 
ness.” 

Gertrude seemed to welcome the chance to free 
her mind. “When you were ready to close down 
the mills and give up—and I was, too—she made 
you hold on. You ought never to have let her go.” 

“It’s too late to switch back.” 


206 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

“It was a mighty bad mistake, Brother.” 

Guests approached to say good-by. Durand, 
greeting them absent-mindedly as they neared his 
sister, crossed the terrace and went out into the gar¬ 
dens. Mrs. Montgomery, deserted by Kennedy, 
caught sight of him. Durand joined her, and, mak¬ 
ing the round of the booths, Mrs. Montgomery spent 
liberally—even beyond what Durand liked. He told 
her so. 

His admonition was capriciously taken and Mrs. 
Montgomery feathered a barb in return. “ Your de¬ 
voted sister is catty to-day, isn't she?” 

“Well, what the devil did you insist on coming 
for?” demanded Durand peevishly. 

“Well, why the devil shouldn't I come and go 
where I please, Bobbie dear?” 

“You know she doesn't like you.” 

“That's why I wanted to come.” 

“You like a fight, don’t you?” 

“No more than Bobbie does, do I?” 

“ Well, you’ve spent all the money I've got. Let's 
get out.” 

Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes fixed on some one in the 
pergola. “Oh, there's Mr. Janeway!” she ex¬ 
claimed. “Let’s speak to him!” 

Durand's face grew black. She laughed out loud. 
But just the same she did insist on going over to 
the tea-tables, where Durand, glumly absorbed in 
thought, sat while Mrs. Montgomery laughed and 
chatted with the chatty attendants and sipped a 
cup of tea. 



AT THE BAZAAR 


207 


The course of true love doesn’t traditionally run 
smooth. But it may at least be said that, compared 
with the course of untrue love, it is the merest mill¬ 
pond. 


CHAPTER XVII 


JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 

The following week Janeway spent an evening with 
Bishop Marion. “I’ve felt some responsibility in 
unloading this arbitration work on an overburdened 
man/’ remarked the visitor blandly. “IVe come to 
ask how you’re getting on.” 

There was no complaint on the Bishop’s part. His 
talk drifted from his difficulties with Simms and the 
obstacles Simms continually put in the way of the 
committee’s investigations, to the strike itself. 

Janeway brought up the letter of the American 
bishops on the duties and rights of labor and capital. 
“I was surprised,” he remarked, “to find it so closely 
in touch, on a very vital subject, with modern 
thought. Democracy, to-day, is as badly abused a 
word as liberty used to be. And we’ve heard so 
much hollow prating about making the world safe 
for democracy, that it’s refreshing to find something 
suggesting a real democracy instead of a sham au¬ 
tocracy to parade ourselves in. Your bishops seem 
to have caught the idea.” 

“There is really but one perfect democracy,” said 
Bishop Marion, “the democracy of sacrifice. Its ef¬ 
fective expression is a collective expression—just as 

the word itself is collective. And the most nearly 

208 


JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 209 

perfect example of it is in the religious communities 
of the Church. It is rather odd that none of our 
dazzling lights of communistic thought has ever no¬ 
ticed that practically the only permanently success¬ 
ful communistic venture is a religious community. 
I always hesitate , 77 continued the Bishop, “when I 
hear that phrase—‘modern thought .” 7 

Jane way manifested impatience. “And yet / 7 he 
interrupted, “why intelligent men—and you repre¬ 
sent intelligent men—should shrink from modern 
thought is one of the repellent things about your 
Church . 77 

Bishop Marion spoke on. “It 7 s not precisely that 
we shrink from the thing itself—we shrink rather 
from mere unquestioning approval of it—an approval 
that seems to connote commendation of a specified 
line of thought because it is modern—which is obvi¬ 
ously foolish. All lines of thought, good or bad, 
were once unimpeachably modern. The principles 
• you approve, set forth by the bishops, are as old as 
the first necessity that ever arose for formulating 
them. If the thought you refer to as ‘ modern 7 
agrees with these, so much the better for it; if it 
doesn’t, so much the worse for modern thought. 

“The appeal that men unwittingly make to ‘mod¬ 
ern 7 thought always reminds me that the Church is 
the very fortress and citadel of thought, if by thought 
be meant clear thinking. It is seemingly the only 
institution that preserves in this dark age of loose 
thinking the art of reasoning. When one nowadays 
appeals to reason, he appeals inevitably to Catholic 



210 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


thought; all other schools have apparently become 
too lazy to think seriously or well. 

a I’ve heard you say, Mr. Janeway, that the rea¬ 
son lawyers fail is because they don’t work hard 
enough to get up their cases. If you ever got up 
the case against ‘ modern’ thought, you’d scourge it 
out of court. The very essence of your own success 
is your devotion to tireless thinking and close, hard 
reasoning—yet modern thought abhors logic, the 
basis of all reasoning; it is patient neither of history 
nor of fact; yet history and fact are the very shield 
and armor of the good lawyer.” 

Janeway brushed the ashes from his cigar. “ That 
may be the reason why good lawyers are afraid to 
quarrel with you.” he suggested. 

“I remember my father’s telling me,” continued 
the Bishop, “of some negro sailors, mutineers, ship¬ 
wrecked on our shores, who were apprehended, tried, 
and convicted of murder on the high seas. The case 
was appealed. John Quincy Adams appeared before 
the Supreme Court of the United States to defend 
the rights of the friendless negroes. You may im¬ 
agine it was not a million-dollar case-” 

“Don’t take a shot at me, Bishop.” 

“My father heard Adams make his argument. It 
was an occasion. Adams must have been a very 
old man then; his eyes bothered him greatly and he 
wiped them continually with a handkerchief. Aside 
from the technicalities of the case, his plea was on 
the rights growing out of the duties of hospitality to 
the miserable men cast, thus, starving upon a foreign 



JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 211 

shore. It was a plea so masterly, as I heard it de¬ 
scribed, that it might well have served for all time 
as a classic on the obligations of hospitality. Adams 
had ransacked history for his precedents, and so 
marshalled them that he carried the court with him; 
his shipwrecked clients were freed. But how many 
men, as eminent to-day as Adams w T as in those days, 
and in old age, would undertake to get up a case for 
naked mariners as Adams got up his case, and to 
win it on an appeal to the obligations of hospitality ? 

“ You spoke of the bishops’ letter. The encyclical 
of Leo XIII on labor, written a generation ago, is the 
classical presentation of the enlightened Christian 
view on that subject; this letter is based on his 
encyclical.” 

“ Whichever way you put it,” observed Janeway 
lazily, “I wish your view-point on other problems 
were as much in harmony with the modern view¬ 
point—less reactionary, Bishop.” 

Both men were smoking peacefully. The discus¬ 
sion was academic. “It’s odd we should be called 
reactionary,” replied the Bishop. “It isn’t the rock 
that’s reactionary—only the waves that dash against 
it—the tides that rise and fall at its feet.” 

Tut it as you will,” persisted Janeway, “men 
and women of to-day—as of many another day—are 
enmeshed in the conventions of a current civiliza¬ 
tion—it is a condition, Bishop, not a theory, that 
confronts men and women”—Janeway was gathering 
steam—“and if your Church stands apart from such 
conventions, shipwreck ensues.” 


212 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Civilization,” commented the Bishop, “is prop¬ 
erly only the leisure moment of Christianity. When 
the world holds up a mirror to Christianity, civiliza¬ 
tion is the image it reflects. If Christianity be fresh, 
vigorous, and beautiful, the image will be such. If 
it be weak and weary, corrupt in high places, or if, 
as to-day, its voice is despised, the image will reflect 
the evil results.” 

“Bishop Marion, are you proud of civilization as 
we see it in the world to-day?” 

“Are you?” 

“No.” 

“No. But the root of the trouble is that civiliza¬ 
tion to-day won’t listen to Christianity; baptism as 
a social prophylactic has fallen to a plane of impor¬ 
tance far below that of vaccination. Yet Christian¬ 
ity offers to a world, distracted as ours is, a trained 
and world-wide army of soldiers strengthened by the 
victories and defeats of twenty centuries. Its forces 
have never been possessed of more elan than to-day 
—a great trained engine at the command of human 
nature against its besetting weaknesses. And all it 
asks of its recruits is that which real intelligence al¬ 
ways suggests—humility. 

“Yet, curiously enough,” continued the Bishop, 
“we, ourselves, are blamed for the ills of the day— 
the war and all else! Few, indeed, understand us; 
few fail to condemn us. The modern wits—grass¬ 
hopper philosophers like Wells, who jump, with the 
confidence of a locust, from ‘It may have been' to 
6 It was ’; our own apostates, like Moore and 



JANE WAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 213 

Ibanez, mere calumniators—these men lie about us 
and defame us with the sangfroid of the Roman wits 
of eighteen hundred years ago. Calumny, I sup¬ 
pose, like flattery, should be well laid on. Among 
the enemies of God, there’s no such word as honor.” 

“It’s the stubbornness of your position,” objected 
Janeway, “that excites the opposition. I feel it at 
times strongly myself,” he said with emphasis. 

“There is inevitably a fundamental difference in 
your view-point and mine,” returned Bishop Marion. 
“You, like most Americans, think in decades; the 
Church thinks in centuries. 

‘Naturally,” he continued, “I hold no brief for 
any mutilated form of Christian faith. I defend 
only that which, being whole, is equal to meeting 
every menace that threatens society. Religion is 
humanity in account with God. The accounting 
must be clear and simple. The religion that can 
direct this accounting must speak with a definite 
authority and be possessed of a delegated power to 
enforce its mandates. Christianity, as I know it, 
and as the world despises it, has lost nolle of its early 
characteristics. It is as vital, as aggressive, as un¬ 
compromising to-day as it was then. It still excites 
the contempt and hatred it has always excited— 
the scorn of the dilettante, the rage of the brutal, 
the resentment of the refined. It is sanely intoler¬ 
ant, profoundly indifferent, supernaturally patient. 

“Yet men may find in it to-day all that St. Augus¬ 
tine found in it fifteen hundred years ago. Nor does 
‘modern’ thought offer to-day to thinking men any 


214 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


more than Augustine tasted and cast from him in 
the husks of the Manicheans.” 

Janeway was silent for a moment. “I came to 
you to-night, in reality,” he said at length, “on any¬ 
thing but an academic errand.” He lighted his 
small bomb under the Bishop with perfect poise. 
“You know enough of me, I think, to realize that in 
laying a case with difficult aspects before you, I 
should not be anything less than perfectly frank. 
And in the solution of its difficulties lies, perhaps, 
the future happiness of a woman, and, of a certainty, 
my own future happiness. I speak of Louise Du¬ 
rand and myself: and I shall tell you the whole 
story. 

“I came back to Fond du Lac a few years ago, 
you remember, as counsellor for the Durand Steel 
Corporation. Durand often invited me to his house; 
I became acquainted with his wife. Almost the first 
time I met her I saw the unhappiness of her position, 
and I realized as quickly the fine simplicity of her 
nature. I saw her aversion to the license of her 
husband—the fight, practically hopeless, that she 
made as he tried to drag her down to the level of his 
own circle of disreputable men and women. And 
watching her intolerable situation, first with curi¬ 
osity, then with respect for the way in which she 
bore the indignities Durand heaped on her before 
his low companions, my admiration deepened into 
something more. There was nothing to keep me 
from telling her all this except—herself. And when 
I was resolved—come what would—to free my mind, 


JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 215 

he had driven her abroad to clear the way for marry¬ 
ing this Montgomery woman. Can you understand 
it all?” 

“I know something of it,” replied the Bishop. 

“She came back. I told her everything. And 
when I had wrung from her the admission that under 
happier circumstances she might have listened, I 
fancied the last obstacle to a new life for both of us 
was removed. Imagine my consternation when she 
told me she had become a Catholic, and that for her 
remarriage was impossible. I refused to believe it. 
She begged me to wait, in any event, before we 
should even discuss remarriage. When I had re¬ 
duced her objections to the last—her religion—I 
asked her, if it stood between us, to give it up—you 
see, I am keeping nothing back.” 

“Did she consent to this?” 

“She refused.” 

Bishop Marion drew a breath. “How well you 
served Satan,” he murmured, “when you put that 
temptation before her!” 

“Do you blame me for doing what any man with 
red blood would do to win the woman he loves?” 
demanded Janeway, with indignant emphasis. “You 
call me a fighter. If a man will fight for money, 
power, justice, won’t he fight for his life and what is 
dearer than life? Shouldn’t you do it?” 

Both men spoke under perfect control; both were 
practised duellists. It could only be said that under¬ 
lying their measured exchanges there was an ele¬ 
ment of mutual forbearance, especially on the part 


216 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


of the Bishop—and a mutual respect. But there 
was likewise, on the one hand, the keenness of re¬ 
solve, and on the other a firmness of principle that 
rendered the discussion grave. 

Bishop Marion paused an instant before answering 
Janeway’s importunate question. “I should not, in 
any event,” he said carefully, “dwell on ‘red’ blood. 
Leave that for men like Durand. The red-blood 
appeal has been used to justify everything man has 
ever done to break a woman’s heart. You and I 
must meet without surrendering our convictions.” 

“We do so meet at this moment,” interposed 
Janeway firmly. “The civil decree is about to free 
her. I must know where she and I stand before 
your Church. And I need your help.” 

“All the help I can give you I will give.” 

“You mean,” commented Janeway, instinctively 
alert, “there is no relief for us?” 

“I mean,” returned the Bishop, “that I myself do 
not know until I learn fully the circumstances sur¬ 
rounding her marriage to Mr. Durand.” 

Janeway felt his way forward with care. “That 
marriage,” he began, “took place wholly, of course, 
outside the jurisdiction of your Church. Neither of 
the parties were of your communion—never had 
been. In those circumstances, Bishop Marion,” he 
asked slowly, “what would be the presumption of 
your Church as to the validity of such a marriage?” 

“Marriage,” observed the Bishop, with equal care, 
“is a natural contract. In the circumstances you 
relate the presumption of the Church would be that 
the marriage is valid.” 


JANEWAY INTERVIEWS THE BISHOP 217 

Janeway’s crushing disappointment was well con¬ 
cealed. “Does that mean/’ he asked, engaged with 
his thoughts, “that the remarriage of the wife during 
the life of her former husband would not be recog¬ 
nized by the Church?” 

“Not quite that. You asked what the presump¬ 
tion would be. But nullifying impediments, diri¬ 
ment impediments, as we call them, that might in¬ 
validate the first marriage, may exist, and such must 
be reckoned with. Presumption, I need hardly say, 
is not proof. You merely presume a man innocent 
until proved guilty; our presumption is the same 
concerning a natural contract. But bring Mrs. Du¬ 
rand to me; let me examine into her case and weigh 
the circumstances.” 

“If she comes she will probably come alone,” con¬ 
tinued Janeway, relaxing, but not less serious. “And 
her sensitiveness is very great. I am only sorry, so 
far as the presenting of her cause goes, that it is not 
hers alone—I mean, that I had no personal interest 
in it. No man can plead his case as well as another 
can plead it for him. And my concern in this mat¬ 
ter is so vital that it really becomes my own case 
when I plead it. But I bespeak, Bishop, for Louise 
Durand, every consideration it is in your power to 
give her. 

“You spoke a few moments ago of an American, 
once a President of the United States and the son of 
a President of the United States, a diplomat of dis¬ 
tinction, among the first of our statesmen, and, in 
addition to all this, an eminent jurist. You told me 



2l8 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


of a moving incident in that man’s extraordinary 
career; how he thought it no derogation of his dig¬ 
nity, not too great a tax on his years, to appear be¬ 
fore our most august tribunal to plead the cause of 
a crew of friendless, shipwrecked negroes, accused 
of mutiny on the high seas, and to urge in their 
abandoned behalf the hospitality of our shores. 

“If this woman, who is very dear to me, comes 
before you as a judge, she will come friendless and 
unknown among those of your great communion; 
she will come, not as a criminal, but as a victim, 
shipwrecked on the shores of a detestable and cor¬ 
rupt society. I ask you to remember that she is 
very new in your Faith. And to weigh in her behalf 
the responsibility that hospitality may rightly im¬ 
pose on you and your Church toward an innocent 
woman who appeals in misfortune to its mercy; I 
ask you to remember John Quincy Adams and his 
negroes.” 

Janeway was taking his leave. 

“I shall try,” said the Bishop simply, “to measure 
up to my responsibilities. Let Mrs. Durand come, 
either with you or alone, as she prefers—and the 
sooner the better.” 

“She is at Turtle Island with Mrs. Harrison just 
now,” said Janeway. 

“When she returns, of course. We shall all,” 
added Bishop Marion gravely, but with sympathetic 
kindliness, “experience anxieties until we know just 
where we stand.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


DAY-DREAMS 

Turtle Island in midsummer combined, so Judge 
Harrison, who had long owned it, maintained, the 
coolness of the lake with the seclusion of the wilder¬ 
ness, and possessed for its owner yet another prime 
attraction—it afforded for him, he said, with a com¬ 
plete change of air and thought, a unique “access- 
and inaccessibility.” A few hours’ run in the launch 
—and the Judge’s launch was not considered, by 
his younger relatives, fast—was more than enough 
to cover the distance from the Fond du Lac pier. 

The island, too, was just large enough for a nine- 
hole golf-course, and this added, for the Judge, the 
crowning attraction of the little speck of green in 
the wide expanse of blue waters. The golf-course 
was never, in Janeway’s estimation, in playable con¬ 
dition, but for the Judge, who talked golf more than 
he played, this was not a vital defect. His summer 
guests were too courteous to complain of the greens, 
and these reached in the end a condition in which, 
as Kennedy said, there were none to complain of. 
But Judge Harrison’s clubs were faithfully carried to 
and from Fond du Lac in the launch, and if by any 
chance they were forgotten, the boat was peremp¬ 
torily turned back. This made the family alert to 

be sure they were aboard. 

219 


220 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Under the dozen Norway pines—and they were 
good ones—at the north end of the island stood the 
Harrison cabin—just a roomy, comfortable affair of 
cedar logs, with a living-room running through the 
middle. At one end of this room was a rough stone 
fireplace, and opening on either side of the living- 
room were bedrooms. The dining-room was entered 
through archways on both sides of the fireplace, and 
facing south, overlooked the lake, the beach pleas¬ 
ingly visible not far away. 

Mrs. Harrison had taken Louise, of whom she was 
fond, over to the island when she went with the ser¬ 
vants to open the house for the summer. Little as 
Louise could bear to talk to any one of her marriage 
experience with Mrs. Harrison’s nephew, the two 
women came to confidences before very long, and 
Mrs. Harrison made it very clear that she under¬ 
stood and sympathized. 

“ Sometimes, Auntie, I think the cruelest part of it 
all is that it has robbed me of faith in all other 
men,” said Louise one evening, before the fire. “I 
have to keep saying to myself: ‘They’re all alike— 
all alike!”’ 

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Harrison, “if you 
are forcing yourself to say that, it only shows you 
haven’t lost faith in men. They are all alike in this, 
my child—men are creatures of the flesh; we may 
as well resign ourselves to that fact. Don’t expect 
to find a normal man without that primal taint in 
his nature. But they are not all alike; pray that you 
may find one with consideration enough to think of 



DAY-DREAMS 


221 


you first; if such a man loves you, you may be sure 
of happiness with him. The other kind—the kind 
that think of their impulse only—you’ve had experi¬ 
ence with, poor girl! ” 

“But sometimes men are the victims of women, 
Auntie; what kind are they?” 

“Both kinds. Their impulses make them the 
easier victims. But the distinction holds; the one 
kind deserve our sympathy; the other kind get what 
they deserve at some vile creature’s hands.” 

They talked late—the younger woman beset by 
difficulties and perplexities—the other experienced in 
the illusions and grounded in the realities of life; and 
Louise went to sleep steadied and strengthened in 
some respects, if still facing the future blindly in 
others. 

On the afternoon following the evening with 
Bishop Marion, Janeway left Chicago on the three- 
o’clock train, joined Judge Harrison at Fond du Lac, 
and Oliver, the Judge’s chauffeur, headed the launch 
for the island. Mrs. Harrison and Louise were at 
the little landing pier to greet the arrivals. If there 
had been any doubt in the minds of the Harrisons as 
to Janeway’s interest in Louise—and her more care¬ 
fully measured return of it—there was none after 
twenty-four hours with their two guests at the island. 

For a lover every situation is an opportunity. A 
mere elevator man on duty in a twenty-story build¬ 
ing can make love with complete happiness provided 
the object of his affections will ride up and down 





222 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


with him—and she will. It is absolutely necessary, 
however, that the interested pair should, in any 
situation, have some moments apart from other peo¬ 
ple. Janeway, after dinner, tried skilfully to draw 
Louise from the fire before which Judge Harrison, 
with his slow-burning cigar, had planted himself. 
But she resisted every appealing hint. Jane way was 
forced to cease repining and to resign himself to 
cards indoors, with only the consolation of eying 
Louise, next to him, somewhat unscrupulously—to 
her occasional embarrassment—and saying for her 
benefit whatever the situation might inspire. 

In the morning, on his way up from the plunge, 
he was singing before breakfast. Over the eggs and 
bacon Mrs. Harrison cautioned him. “I pay no 
attention to that wretched saying,” he remarked, 
frankly contemptuous of it. “I learned long ago 
the wisdom of singing before breakfast. Often it’s 
the only time of day a man gets a chance to sing. 
Weep if you have to; sing when you can.” And with 
hardly a break he suggested, addressing Louise: 
“Let’s go fishing.” 

While Louise parried, Judge Harrison, with con¬ 
tempt for fishermen’s ignorance, growled: “Nothing 
but perch out there, Jane way.” 

Janeway was not disturbed. He disputed the 
Judge’s dictum, and set up as an authority on island 
fishing himself. 

With Louise, after a decent resistance won over, 
Janeway disappeared, and when in a sport skirt and 
under a summer hat she appeared on the porch, 


DAY-DREAMS 


223 

Janeway was in the garden with a tin can and a 
spading fork, digging angleworms. 

Louise laughed. “Do you really want to go fish¬ 
ing ?” she asked, as she joined him. 

“No, do you?” 

“No.” 

“Then come on !” He struck the fork vigorously 
into the ground, to desert it then and there. Louise 
pointed to the tin can. “Those poor worms!” 
Jane way, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket 
to dust his fingers, kicked the can over, and with 
Louise took the path through the woods. 

He told her of his talk with the Bishop. Louise, 
not temperamentally optimistic, got less encourage¬ 
ment than Janeway got out of it. He was conscious 
of her anxiety. “We shan’t get on without a fight— 
I don’t expect to,” he declared bluntly. “I never 
got anything worth while yet without a fight, so I 
could hardly hope for all of this world and part of 
the next without one.” He looked hard at her, but 
Louise was looking, or trying to look, ahead. “No¬ 
body ever handed me anything on a platter,” he 
went on grimly. “All the bright boys in my town 
were picked up at one time or another and made 
proteges of by some big man; no one every picked 
me up for a winner; nobody ever seemed to need 
brains when mine were for sale. I was just a puny, 
sallow-faced kid. I couldn’t do anything that made 
other boys famous. I hadn’t even good looks— 
which are a material asset, even when not backed 
by brains.” 


224 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“But think,” exclaimed Louise, not repressing, for 
the instant, her feelings, “what you’ve done in your 
profession ! My! If I were you, I should be swollen 
with pride.” 

“No—you’d be thinking of the many things you 
should have done better. I’ve too often cut down 
with an axe when I should have thrust with a rapier. 
And,” he went on, with unabated interest in his 
failures, “/ never could swim across the river. I 
never could make the ‘first nine’ in baseball. Even 
in the ‘ Turner School,’ the best I ever could do was 
the ‘Knieweller.’ ” 

“What on earth is the ‘Knieweller’ ?” 

“It would be hard to explain without a turning 
pole; but it was the easiest of many other ‘wellers’— 
not nearly so hard as you are.” 

“ Ah!” She caught her breath with the little ex¬ 
clamation. “Why did you look to a woman so hard 
to clear the way to?” 

Janeway looked at her. “Think of what’s at the 
end of the way.” 

“Have they agreed on a money settlement 
yet?” 

“It’s all over but the quarrelling. You remember 
Simms decided, under proper pressure, to withdraw 
his original complaint and immediately substitute an 
amended complaint, with the objectionable features 
left out. After a conference last week it was agreed 
between your attorneys and Durand’s that Judge 
Bellows—the case is before him—should sit in cham¬ 
bers as an arbitrator to arrive at a final agreement 


DAY-DREAMS 


225 

on the property settlement, the deeds and other 
securities involved in this to be placed in escrow and 
delivered out at the time of signing the final decree; 
and that a stipulation of settlement be filed in the 
divorce proceedings and the final decree come down. 
This may sound a little confusing to you-” 

Louise sighed. “It does.” 

“But things are arranged with sinister clarity. 
Just give me a judge that understands—that’s all I 
ask.” Janeway paused at a thought. “Whenever 
Judge Harrison used to hear me say that he would 
always take the chance to grumble:. ‘And a jury 
that doesn’t understand’—which wasn’t true, but 
he liked to say so. Anyway, Judge Bellows does 
understand.” 

“How I shrink,” murmured Louise, “from all this 
divorce disgrace!” 

“The disgrace fixes solely on him.” 

“And the settlement of all this money on me 
worries me.” 

“The sole reason I’ve insisted on it is because you 
won’t give me an answer. Say you’ll be my wife 
and I’ll drop this settlement matter instanter.” 

“But independently of any answer to you, I am 
well able to take care of myself.” 

Janeway stopped in the path before her. They 
had reached the edge of the woods, and were facing 
the lake and the beach. “Louise,” he asked, “am 
I your legal adviser or am I not?” 

She glanced up with just enouglfof mischief in her 
eyes to set his pulses going. “You’re not perma- 



226 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


nently retained yet. But I haven’t any other,” she 
added. 

“Then this settlement must go through. It’s 
the merest recompense—inadequate compensation.” 
They walked along the beach till they found a drift¬ 
wood log. “I’m finally getting it clear in my mind, 
Louise,” Janeway continued, as they sat down, “ why 
that fellow pursued you so. Putting two and two 
together—what I’ve heard of his business affairs 
from his Uncle Sid and what you’ve told me—he 
was cold-bloodedly after your money!” 

Louise, looking down, was running the hem of 
her handkerchief between her thumb and finger. 
Without moving her head, she lifted her eyes to his. 
“Don’t I get any personal credit?” she asked, in a 
demure effort to abate his angry intensity. 

He was not to be turned from his resentful indict¬ 
ment. “He needed it to tide him over the c psycho¬ 
logical depression ’ that culminated in 1913. He was 
close to the rocks that year, his uncle says; your 
money saved him.” Janeway twisted his shoulders 
in protest. “What a price,” he exclaimed slowly 
and savagely, “for a girl to pay for the crime of in¬ 
heriting wealth! What a tragedy—my Louise! 

“Durand is ingratiating,” Janeway went on, less 
tensely. “I remember how genuinely surprised I 
was the first time he lied to me. One of the trea¬ 
sured watchwords of my corrupted youth was that 
no man who was a liar could succeed in life. A sla¬ 
vish adherence to that maxim nearly wrecked my 
early career. First and last, I’ve had to scrap a 




DAY-DREAMS 


227 

great deal of copy-book maxim as far as it refers to 
success in life—or to what men agree to call success. 
Not a few of the great exemplars of big business that 
I know are likewise, if occasion demands, extremely 
able-bodied liars—Durand’s no worse than the 
others. His crowning villainy was that he broke 
your heart!” 

“No!” interposed Louise, disclaiming instantly. 
“He could humiliate me, he could torture my feel¬ 
ings—but he couldn’t break my heart. It never be¬ 
longed to him. You—be careful of it—will you ? ” 

He looked at her so suddenly it almost took her 
breath. Then she laughed at his gravity. “When 
I do break it—” he said grimly- 

“When you do break it,” she echoed, cutting off 
his words, imitating his frown and mockingly sol¬ 
emn. 

“—let me drink the poison from your hand.” 

The moment seemed to bring a care-free happi¬ 
ness. “I can’t promise that,” she objected. “I 
might need it myself.” She pointed to the clump 
of willow shoots at her hand. “Cut me a switch.” 

When he handed it to her she began stripping the 
leaves from it. “Whatever possessed you,” she de¬ 
manded, turning on him a Lilliputian frown of her 
own, “to follow a luckless creature like me down 
that day to that swamp? What were you thinking 
of?” 

“I wanted to save you from the fate to which 
you were headlong rushing.” 

“Fate?” 



228 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“That of marrying a rebuilt hero of France. I 
didn’t want to see you tied to a damaged poilu .” 

“ My heavens, would you wish me on a poor poilu? 
Couldn’t you do better than that for a slightly re¬ 
spectable client? But you shan’t make fun of the 
poor poilus; they’re too sacred.” 

“Well, then, to one of those cigarette-waisted bar¬ 
ons that drain our country of its wealth. Only the 
other day I had to draw a marriage-settlement con¬ 
tract for an innocent old candy maker who had 
amassed too many millions in Chicago real estate. 
A third of his fortune had to go to a puttering 
Frenchman for marrying his silly daughter.” 

“And she may have been dear at the price!” 

“But in your case I was resolved not to see your 
respected father’s estate—if you could ever get your 
hands on it again—go to feed the flower of a foreign 
aristocracy—especially”—he coughed slightly to 
point his remark—“if there was a chance to salvage 
any part of it for a poor but dishonest Ameri¬ 
can.” 

He talked to her of himself, as if to put himself as 
honestly as he could before her. Something in his 
confidences, and especially in his odd voice, always 
drew her to him; some intonation, some note, some 
manner of his saying even little things, broke each 
time like a rude wave against the barriers of her 
scepticism. In spite of herself, she believed; sincer¬ 
ity seemed to echo from his words—though she knew 
how perfectly able he was to conceal his thoughts. 
“It’s not that I deceive people,” he had said once 




DAY-DREAMS 


229 

to her, in defense, “I only allow them to deceive 
themselves; when they wake it’s too late—I’m gone ! ” 

And when he spoke her name as he had only now 
—from the depths of an emotion" she had never 
realized could be in a man’s heart—she felt helpless 
—almost marvelled at his restraint when alone with 
her, for she dreaded how an unguarded moment 
might have overwhelmed her own. “Can you won¬ 
der,” she managed to say, with an attempt at cold¬ 
ness, as she spoke again of her husband, “that I 
have no faith in men?” 

“But you still can have faith in a man. Point 
your finger at me and say: ‘ You are the man!’” 

“I’d rather not take a dollar from Robert Du¬ 
rand,” she said. “I’ve suffered so much at his 
hands, I hate even to think of him. At first he was 
so fussy about me, so considerate—and then gradu¬ 
ally—think of having to live through it! The prot¬ 
estations—and the neglect! 

“And then”—her voice tightened—“there came a 
moment when I knew—really knew—I was no longer 
first with him. What a moment! Another woman! 
And I no longer preferred—just cast off, like a dis¬ 
carded glove. How I struggled that night with 
shame and rage! How little I understood, that night; 
how little I realized what a foundation of sand my 
house of pride had been built on”—she stopped. 

“Sometimes,” said Janeway in hard tones, “we 
are compelled, or think we are, to cast pearls before 
swine. It is, of course, trying business. But occa¬ 
sionally, when all else has failed and the pearls are 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


230 

definitely discredited, the swine may still be moved 
by a certificate from some one whom they are used 
to regarding as an authority, attesting the market 
value of the gems. When Durand finds out I’ve 
won you, he’ll burst with rage.” 

“But you can’t know,” she exclaimed, as if the 
brand were still hot on her heart, “the abasement of 
that first moment when a woman realizes it all— 
you who always, everywhere, come first!” 

He checked her with explosive energy. “Don’t 
say that!” 

“It’s true—you always succeed.” 

“Don’t say that, Louise!” he exclaimed in pro¬ 
test. “I couldn’t count my failures.” 

“How can you honestly say that?” 

“What you count successes have been wrung from 
men that hated me. They had no choice but to 
concede them. They needed me to put through 
their schemes. But, Louise —you didn’t need me to 
make money for you—you didn’t have to like me—it 
all just came out of your heart! I can’t understand 
yet how you could listen to me ! I’ve always thought 
the finest instinct a woman has is her love for her 
offspring—the flesh of her flesh, the bone of her bone. 
How in the name of God she can love a man is a 
little too deep yet for me—no doubt He understands 
it.” 

“You would understand it,” said Louise, “if you 
understood our vanity and weakness. We’re very 
common clay. Perhaps that’s why you love us.” 

“Do you know,” he asked suddenly, “what I 




DAY-DREAMS 


231 

count my one success in life—my only success in 
life?” 

She turned away, unwilling or unable either to 
respond or to bear his look—for his answer to his 
question was already foreshadowed in his tone and 
manner—just whipping her foot lightly with the wil¬ 
low. “My one success,” he repeated, not alone 
with a lover’s ardor but with a deeper conviction, 
“is that I come first with you! Nothing else—I 
count nothing else ! Oh !” he exclaimed, “if I could 
have met you ten years ago—if you could have 
loved me ten years ago!” 

She laughed softly. “Barely sixteen !” 

“Yes,” he declared energetically, unabashed. 
“When you were barely sixteen! What I could 
have saved you! ” 

“I don’t know whether I could have loved any¬ 
body then—I was such a fool! But now I can at 
least make my way in the world. I can earn my 
own living.” 

He was gently tolerant. “What a picture you’d 
make, earning your own living—you’re so big and 
strong!” 

She held her ground. “I could do it.” 

“How, for instance?” 

“I could do lots of things—teach.” 

Janeway was laughing at her. “Do you think 
you could possibly find any one to teach that knows 
less than you do?” 

Louise blazed. “Why, the idea!” 

“I mean, less of the world.” 



232 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

“I could sew.” 

‘‘ Kimonos ? Shirts ? Pa j amas ? Louise! ’ ’ 

“Oh, you needn’t laugh. I could do lots of 
things.” 

He was thinking, as his eyes rested on her, of a 
remark Harrison, in speaking of Durand, had once 
made to him; it was the first time he had ever heard 
of Louise. “Bob has a very bright wife,” the Judge 
had said, “a California girl. Elizabeth says she’s 
too thin to be beautiful. But she makes a hit with 
me. She’s got more brains than Bob,” the Judge had, 
in his staccato fashion, blurted out in conclusion. 

As she sat before Janeway now in the morning 
sun, the thinness Harrison had criticised had gone, 
and the interval had given her the color—some¬ 
times high—denied by earlier years. 

“I’ll tell you what you could do,” suggested Jane¬ 
way. “Write beauty hints to women for yellow news¬ 
papers. If you could only tell women how to charm 
merely by doing nothing—the way you do ! But you 
couldn’t do even that. Charm is incommunicable. 

“No; while I live, outside of any question of set¬ 
tlement from Durand, and whether you marry me 
or not, you shall never have to earn your own liv¬ 
ing. At the least, I can and will be responsible for 
your subsistence. There’s no law, human or divine, 
against my providing for you.” 

“I couldn’t take money from you if I didn’t marry 
you.” 

He closed his hands as he looked at her. “Louise, 
I’ll get money to you if I have to break into your 



DAY-DREAMS 


233 

room at night like a thief, and slip it into your purse 
by stealth. And I’ll bend above you as you sleep, 
to steal the fragrance of your breath!” 

“ Henry!” 

“HI originate a new burglary; I’ll become an un¬ 
heard-of criminal for you. Unlooked-for returns 
shall come to you, strange dividends reach you un¬ 
awares; I’ll be behind every man you turn to for a 
position; mysterious salaries shall arise on every 
hand. But every man you speak to will fall in love 
with you-” 

“They haven’t yet!” 

“—then I’ll strangle each one in turn the way I’d 
have strangled Durand one day when he mentioned 
your name—if Simms hadn’t pushed him out of the 
room. 

“You earn your living! The only way you could 
ever work hard enough to earn it would be in keep¬ 
ing me from providing it.” 

“Do you know you’ll break my heart with kind¬ 
ness?” 

“If you call that kindness, what’s to come would, 
as Jim Kennedy might say, reduce your pulsing mus¬ 
cle to the merest fragment, believe me. Louise, do 
you ever think of it—the mark of this world to-day, 
whichever way you turn, is unhappiness? Every¬ 
where it’s unhappiness. Frankly, I want to escape 
it. I don’t feel I’m responsible for the present in¬ 
fernal state of things. But I do feel, with a horrible 
conviction, that you’re my only way out.” 

She was gazing out on the lake. “Don’t forget,” 



234 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

she said, “that any one capable of great happiness 
cannot hope to escape great suffering—they go to¬ 
gether. Oh, you’re very patient with my wretched 
difficulties. I know I ought to give you an answer.” 

“Not till you give me the right one. But, Lou¬ 
ise,” he added, “remember—there is a time for all 
things. Remember, the time for all things passes. 
Perhaps I’ve waited too long for my happiness. 
But when I think of you, I say to myself : 1 No. God 
meant I should wait for her.’ Only—don’t let the 
cup slip from our lips! ” 

“How can I ever marry you with this stone wall 
of divorce between us?” 

“We must smash through any wall that parts us. 
I could make you outface this cringing, contempti¬ 
ble world; I could force it to your feet. It’s only 
your religion—this strange, uncompromising, incom¬ 
prehensible, human and unhuman high court of 
Christianity that keeps you from me. Louise! Will 
you sacrifice me for an ideal?” 

“It is not an ideal—it’s a faith. If you take it 
from me—if I lose it—I lose myself; I am lost.” 

“Why did you ever put such a mountain as this 
Catholic Church between us? Why?” 

“I turned to its hope to escape this world. I 
knew I was raising an impassable barrier against re¬ 
marrying. What had marriage brought me but hu¬ 
miliation, wretchedness, sorrow, shame!” 

“Damn men, anyway!” he exclaimed. “What 
were they made for?” 

“How could I but detest it?” she asked. “How 



DAY-DREAMS 


235 

could I foresee such a moment as this ? Forget me! 
Give me up!” 

“Louise, I can’t give you up! You can give up 
what stands between us. Join some other church— 
turn Mohammedan, Hindu, Mormon—I don’t care 
a hang what you are. Only, for God’s sake don’t 
throw me over!” 

“And what manner of creature should I be, if I 
now denied the Truth ? I could never be the woman 
you hope for—the woman to make you happy, as 
you deserve to be. Had I never known this faith, 
it would be different. If I abandon it now, I lose, 
with its hope, even my self-respect. I am a grovel¬ 
ling apostate—worse than this low pagan I have put 
out of my life! ” 

“Stop, Louise!” 

“Give me up. It is hopeless!” 

Janeway rose to his feet. “You call it hopeless; 
be it so. For me it is not hopeless—nothing is hope¬ 
less. I will grapple with this to the death. I will 
study your faith till I know it better than you 
know it. I will besiege your priests till they run 
from the sight of me. I’ll wrestle with them till 
they gasp for breath! I will grope for every clew, 
clutch at every straw; hope, while I live, against 
hope. I will never give you up. After you see 
Marion, I will talk to him till one of us drops dead. 
I will go to Rome itself!” 

Louise rose in turn. She could not conceal her 
emotion as she regarded him. “ Surely, if they could 
hear you now they would find a way.” 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


236 

“I mean it. I will hear, if I must, from the lips 
of the Pope himself what you dread to ask. He him¬ 
self shall tell me that because you’ve become a 
Christian you’ve condemned yourself to death in 
life, a woman neither married nor unmarried, a wife 
and no wife, a victim of the brutality of man, and 
a sacrifice on the altar of an all-merciful Christian¬ 
ity ! I’m going to fight single-handed for my right 
to live, to breathe, to have my being in the woman 
I believe God created for me—as I believe He cre¬ 
ated me for her. Louise, wish me luck-” 

She threw away her switch as she looked straight 
at him and rose to go. “I’d wish you, if I could, 
into heaven!” 



CHAPTER XIX 


THE ORDEAL LOOMS 

That night Louise dreamed—not of the hours of 
the day she and Janeway had spent wandering over 
the island—not of the fragrance of the pine woods 
or the odor of reedy margins in their deep recesses— 
not of those early moments in which a woman realizes 
for the first time in her life that she is deeply, pas¬ 
sionately loved by an honest man, and allows the 
yearnings of her heart to open it a little to the devo¬ 
tion of a lover—not of any of these pledges of a 
happy day after a dreadful night did she dream, but 
of trying amid agonizing confusion to catch a train 
that every one was hurrying to reach, and for which 
she seemed just too late. Janeway, clasping one 
hand, was urging her with energy up the platform; 
but Durand, refusing to release her other hand, was 
stubbornly holding her back. 

“Did you finally make it?” asked Janeway, when 
she told him next morning. Both, by an unspoken 
but mutual conspiracy, were ready for breakfast 
ahead of their hosts. 

“Oh, I woke up,” said Louise, “so I don’t know.” 

“Well, my name isn’t Joseph,” he said, bending 
confidentially toward her over his coffee-cup, and 
giving an excellent imitation of Judge Harrison’s 
softest nasal tone, “but no seer is needed to inter- 

237 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


238 

pret that dream—it’s taking candy from the baby. 
The train you were trying to catch was Happiness. 
The pulling and hauling on my part and Durand’s 
explains itself. But I suspect a contributing cause 
to your painful vision was a poor mattress; there 
was an awful hole in mine. Change rooms and beds 
with me to-night, and you’ll find yourself falling over 
a terrible precipice, or headed for the bottom of the 
sea, with me trying to bail the boat, and Durand 
furtively opening the sea-cocks and making faces at 
Neptune. 

“There’s a bit more, though, to your dream about 
trying to catch the Happiness train that everybody 
was running after. It’s this: You’ve made certain 
reservations aboard that train, and in a particular 
car. I shouldn’t have been so particular myself, but 
that’s aside. If any car would do you, the last 
would be as good as the first; however, you’ve put it 
up to me to get you aboard one particular car— 
where accommodations are somewhat limited. And 
that’s my job. 

“Fortunately,” continued Janeway gravely, “the 
conductor in charge is well disposed. Naturally he 
has asked to see your ticket, and we must show it to 
him before we can know what our chances are for a 
compartment. So—will you see the Bishop alone, 
or shall I go with you?” 

They saw him together. In the afternoon Oliver 
took them over to Fond du Lac. Janeway made an 
appointment through Father Smyth, the Bishop’s 


THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


239 

secretary, for that evening, and at eight o’clock 
he called for Louise. They drove together to the 
Bishop’s residence. 

Bishop Marion lived in a roomy, old-fashioned 
brick house that stood in a grimy street not far from 
the rolling-mills, and in the block occupied by the 
procathedral. In an early day the house had been 
the home of a well-to-do Fond du Lac family. De¬ 
serted by them as the town grew to the north, the 
property had been bought for church purposes, and 
gradually the whole block had been acquired. The 
old church used as a procathedral stood at one end 
of the block and the Bishop’s house at the other. 
Both were now greatly overshadowed by a huge 
parochial school which rose between the two, and 
which, with the exception of a large hospital that he 
had sponsored, comprised in its scope and expense 
most of the building operations that Bishop Marion 
had thus far achieved. When Janeway had re¬ 
proached him for worshipping in a shabby church 
and spending his money on a big school building, the 
Bishop had asked him what he should think of a 
husbandman-farmer who, if forced to choose, should 
build a big house in preference to a big barn. 
“Moreover,” he had added, “I must set an example 
for my priests.” 

Louise had been in the house but once before; 
that was some years earlier, with Gertrude, to ar¬ 
range for a hospital benefit. She remembered only 
its dull, smoky interior and its very bare reception- 
room. 


240 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


Twilight softened the steep, shabby roof angles of 
the house as their car stopped before it. The recep¬ 
tion-room seemed to Louise’s quick, nervous glance 
absolutely unchanged. The woodwork seemingly 
bore its original paint—not positively black but 
sombrely dark. Large folding doors, now closed, 
communicated with the chapel on one side, and a 
door opened on a rear room, but the height and 
width and gloom of these doors added to the depress¬ 
ing effect of the dreadfully ornate black-marble man¬ 
telpiece that stared at Louise as she sat opposite it. 

The pictures were hardly less formal than the few 
pieces of carved walnut furniture in the room. On 
one side of the mantel hung a tolerable oil portrait 
of Benedict XV, and on the other an excellent copy 
on stone of the Richmond portrait of Cardinal New¬ 
man. His sweet dignity seemed, in the shabby gas¬ 
light, reassuring even to Louise’s uneasy eyes. She 
called Janeway’s attention to this picture, for she 
remembered it on her first visit as the most sympa¬ 
thetic feature of the room. 

“I’ve been trying, from the looks of this room, 
Bishop, to decide whether you’re a very rich man or 
a very poor one; you might be either,” observed 
Jane way, after the Bishop had entered from the hall. 

Bishop Marion laughed. “If debts would make 
a man rich, I should have nothing to complain of. 
Come this way, Mrs. Durand.” 

The Bishop led his callers across the hall and 
ushered them through a large room fitted as a busi¬ 
ness office into a smaller room opening into it from 


THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


241 


the rear. This was, in effect, a private office. Louise 
and Janeway were comfortably seated, and the 
Bishop, taking the chair at his table, addressed him¬ 
self without further prelude to Louise. 

“Mr. Janeway has outlined to me something of 
the difficult situation in which you find yourselves, 
Mrs. Durand. And I assume you understand all he 
has told me of his wish to marry you?” Louise, 
not speaking, inclined her head in assent. “And,” 
added the Bishop, “that he speaks for you both?” 
She nodded again. Bishop Marion perceived the 
strain under which she was laboring. “You have 
become a Catholic,” he continued. “You have pro¬ 
fessed, no doubt despite great difficulties, the Chris¬ 
tian faith of the many centuries. I have had no 
favorable opportunity to offer you my felicitations 
on the privilege of having embraced this faith; and 
my hope that you will persevere in it. Converts do 
not always realize what happens. It is not so much 
the neophyte who chooses as it is God who first 
offers the grace of faith. Once receiving this gift, 
we may accept it or reject it; but before we can 
choose, God first must give. 

“He has chosen you, my child, into His fold, and 
your will has corresponded to His great gift. This is 
why I felicitate you. In all of the divine economy, 
nothing to our eyes moves more mysteriously than 
grace; and to you, not to another, it has been given. 

“And now, I beg you to remember, you are in 
your Father’s house; and in the difficulties in which 
you find yourself because you are there, be not dis- 


242 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


mayed; for all that a Father can give you He will 
give. It is not always possible for even the most 
devoted parent to gratify every wish of his child; 
but the will and the wish for her greatest good is 
always in that parent’s heart—how much more so 
in the heart of God for the child of His creation ! 

“Now I must ask all about your marriage with 
Mr. Durand. Did you enter into your marriage 
with him of your own free will?” 

It was still difficult for Louise to speak. She an¬ 
swered simply: “I did.” 

Janeway started. “No!” he interposed quietly, 
but instantly. “Your mother—you told me, it was 
she who made you marry Durand.” 

Louise looked at him. “Unhappily,” she said 
clearly, “I consented.” 

The Bishop listened carefully. “Unless you were 
under duress,” he said, “no chance lies for us there. 
You married him in good faith?” 

“I did.” 

“Had Mr. Durand ever been married before—had 
he, by any chance, a wife living at the time of your 
marriage to him?” 

“No, Bishop Marion.” Janeway, his eyes on 
Louise, sat in a brown study. “I have never heard 
a previous marriage mentioned in the family.” But 
Janeway held his peace, for on this point he 
could offer nothing. Bishop Marion was reflecting. 
“That gate, too,” he said, “is closed.” 

“You never heard even a hint of such a thing?” 
asked Janeway of Louise. 



THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


243 

“I am quite sure,” she returned, “that he was 
never married before.” 

“Tell me,” continued the Bishop, “where were 
you married to Mr. Durand, and by whom?” 

“Our wedding was at the Church of the Messiah, 
in San Francisco; we were married by Doctor Frale.” 

“May his bond,” said Janeway between his teeth, 
“prove as flimsy as his name!” 

“You, of course,” said Bishop Marion, still ad¬ 
dressing Louise, “never had been married before?” 

“No, Bishop Marion.” 

“Do you know, Mrs. Durand,” continued the 
Bishop, “whether Mr. Durand had ever been bap¬ 
tized?” 

“He never had been, Bishop Marion.” 

“He never had been?” The Bishop leaned for¬ 
ward a little as he echoed her words. “Are you sure 
of that?” he asked, scrutinizing her closely. 

“His mother told me he never had been.” 

“How did she happen to tell you that?” 

“In this way: His mother was reared a Catholic. 
She had given up her religion when very young. In 
her last illness, she told me and told Gertrude, among 
other things, that Robert and Gertrude had never 
been baptized, and she regretted it. That’s why 
Gertrude calls herself a ‘pagan,’” smiled Louise, 
looking at Jane way as she spoke. 

But Bishop Marion did not join in the smile. 
“Had you, Mrs. Durand,” he asked, “ever been 
baptized?” 

“Not until I was baptized in Geneva last year.” 


244 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Are you very sure of that?” he asked search- 
ingly and almost suddenly. “Never before?” 

“Quite sure. I was asked particularly then. My 
mother was an invalid after my birth. I was taken 
care of from infancy by my Aunt Maynie—she en¬ 
gaged my nurses and chose my governesses. She 
was living last year in Vevey, and wrote me about 
it at the time of my baptism, so I am quite sure. 
I have her letter. She is now at home in St. 
Louis.” 

Bishop Marion regarded her with serious eyes. 
“You feel very sure then,” he said, measuring his 
words, “that you can lay before me satisfactory 
evidence that neither you nor Mr. Durand had 
been baptized at the time you married him?” 

Louise replied without hesitation. “Oh, I think 
so, Bishop Marion. There should be no serious 
difficulty about that, I am sure.” 

“And I,” interposed Janeway mildly, “ought to 
be of some assistance in assembling what you re¬ 
quire concerning the facts.” 

The Bishop sat a moment wrapped in thought. 
Janeway only watched him closely. Conscious of 
the oppressive hush of the moment, Louise looked 
down at the flimsy handkerchief in her gloved hand, 
clasped it more tightly, and waited for what should 
follow. 

She could not know precisely what a moment in 
her life had just been reached; how delicately the 
chances for her present happiness were now being 
weighed in the scales of twenty centuries by the 


THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


2 45 

tired man before her; she was only conscious of a 
feeling that she loved Janeway deeply, a hope that 
she might yet be the means of his happiness. Only 
a woman is capable of such a hope. * 

“You lay a peculiar complication before me; not 
a new one—a very old one,” said the Bishop, still 
thoughtful. “You wish to know, my child, whether 
you are free to marry again. And you ask this as a 
Christian woman—one that has embraced the Cath¬ 
olic faith with intent to follow its teachings?” 

“Yes, Bishop Marion.” 

“Are you prepared to abide by what it shall de¬ 
cide?” 

Louise moved in her chair. “How can I do other¬ 
wise?” 

“Mr. Janeway has pleaded with you to give up 
that faith if it should raise a barrier between you; 
and you have refused to do so ?” 

His bluntness frightened her, yet something in his 
voice gave reassurance. She looked gravely at Jane¬ 
way. “He understands,” was all she said. 

“And you, Mr. Janeway, ask whether this woman 
is free in her faith to marry you?” 

“Just that,” said Janeway coldly. 

“Are you a Christian?” 

“I am not.” 

“You told me once,” observed the Bishop, sur¬ 
prised, “that you had been baptized?” 

“Quite true, Bishop, I have been; but I make no 
pretensions.” 

“And are you willing, Mr. Janeway, in your turn, 


246 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

to abide by what my findings in Mrs. Durand’s case 
may be?” 

“I am not!” 

The instant smoothness of Janeway’s refusal dis¬ 
concerted for a moment even the Bishop. But he 
was quickly equal to a rejoinder. “Does that 
mean,” he asked, turning his collected faculties on 
Janeway, “that if I find no relief for her, you will 
continue to press upon her your suit; continue to 
urge her to deny her faith to grant it ? Surely, this 
is not fair. You are an eminent lawyer. You have 
a perfect comprehension of what law means. Yet 
you appeal to a court, and in the same breath say 
frankly you will not abide by its decision—even 
when you must know,” he added, in reproach, “that 
the court is only too anxious to find for you, if it 
can be found, the relief you seek.” 

Janeway met the statement with entire poise. 
“Bishop Marion,” he said gravely, “you have no 
need to ask in what esteem I hold you, but this is a 
question that bites into my very life. Your faith you 
would maintain with your last breath, defend at your 
life’s cost. Know, then, what this question means 
that you have put so lightly to me. This woman is 
my faith; she is my religion. I remember nothing of 
how she came into my life; I only know that at the 
price of it I would cheerfully seek her happiness.” 

“Would you seek her happiness,” asked the 
Bishop in like tone, “before your own?” 

Janeway showed emphasis. “My happiness could 
only be hers!” he exclaimed. “But somehow, some- 



THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


247 

where/’ he added intensely, “ there is relief for us. 
And if you decide against us I will go for our relief 
to Rome itself.” 

A faint smile on the Bishop’s face* seemed sympa¬ 
thetic, but he pressed his visitor without relenting. 
“And beyond Rome?” he asked. 

Janeway responded without hesitation. “ It would 
rest with God—and Louise !” 

As Janeway spoke Louise’s name, Bishop Marion 
turned his grave eyes on her. “In the circumstances 
you lay before me,” he said, “we can move only a 
step at a time. And the first step will seem harsh.” 
He appeared to speak as if in warning and in ap¬ 
peal to both. “But it is the great step,” he added, 
“and with it taken, the path, I hope, will be much 
clearer.” He turned to Louise. “My child, this 
step is yours to take.” 

“What is it to be?” 

“You must ask Mr. Durand whether he will con¬ 
sent to live again with you as his wife, in peace, and 
will promise in good faith not to interfere with you 
in any way in the practice of your religion.” Jane¬ 
way started violently. Louise regarded the Bishop 
with open amazement. Indeed, she could hardly 
collect herself to echo the Bishop’s words. “Ask 
him,” she exclaimed, “whether he will consent to live 
again with me , as his wife ! Why, we are divorced! ” 

“True,” returned the Bishop, “but that should, in 
point of fact, make the trial even safer than if you 
were not.” 

Her horror at the proposal was reflected in her 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


248 

expression. “That,” she said, almost choking, “I 
could never, never do !” 

“I warned you,” repeated the Bishop calmly, 
“that it would seem harsh.” 

Louise appeared desperate. “I could give up my 
life before I could do that! ” 

“Such a proposal is intolerable, Bishop Marion,” 
interposed Taneway energetically. “ Intolerable even 
to think of.” 

“Let us all keep our heads,” remarked the Bishop 
admonishingly. 

Louise looked hopeless. “I could not live,” she 
exclaimed, “for another hour under the same roof 
with that man!” 

Bishop Marion held firm, but appealed for cool¬ 
ness. 

“We tread on very thin ice, my children,” he said 
gently. “Let us weigh carefully our words.” 

He saw how Louise was cut to the heart. “Our 
words ! ’’ she exclaimed. “ Yes ! But their meaning! 
Who but I can weigh that? You two, the kindest 
of men, are yet men. I, God help me, am a woman 
—I alone can weigh their meaning !” 

“I am not asking you to live with Mr. Durand,” 
said the Bishop guardedly. “I bid you only to ask 
him whether, under certain rigorous conditions to be 
imposed, he will consent to live with you.” 

It was a moment before the tortured woman could 
speak. When she did speak, it was under better 
control of her feelings, but with no less horror of the 
Bishop’s request. 


THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


249 

“I need no discrimination,” she said more col¬ 
lectedly, “to make me realize what such a step 
means. Ask me anything, Bishop Marion, but that; 
ask me to drag myself on my knees in shame before 
him; ask me to forget that I have a heart; ask me 
never again to look into the face of any man. Don’t 
force me to go again to him!” 

“Calm yourself, dear Mrs. Durand,” said the 
Bishop. “No one—I least of all—will force you to 
do anything.” 

Janeway thundered his feeling into words. “No 
one,” he exclaimed, “shall force you, Louise.” 

“Then let us think of it no more,” she said in¬ 
stantly. 

“My dear child,” interposed the Bishop, “this in¬ 
terpellation must be made. It is not optional; it is 
necessary. I have no authority to dispense you 
from it. And without it, you leave me powerless in 
any way to help you.” 

“Then I say,” declared Janeway and speaking to 
Louise, “if you can’t bear that message to him, I 
can. I,” he said ominously, “will talk to Durand.” 

Louise grasped eagerly at the straw. She ap¬ 
pealed to the Bishop. “Could he act for me?” 

The older man, thinking, looked at Janeway. 
“The bearer of that message,” he said in measured 
tones, “will have need of very great self-control. 
The least rashness might lead to the death of the 
very hopes you seek by the step to kindle.” 

“What do you mean, Bishop?” asked Louise. 

“You know how acutely revengeful Mr. Durand 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


250 

is. He feels more bitterly toward you,” the Bishop 
looked at Janeway, “than toward any man living— 
unless,” he added with a faint smile, “it be toward 
me. Suppose Mr. Durand should gain, through Mr. 
Janeway’s coming from you,” he went on, speaking 
to Louise, “an inkling of your mutual hopes—and— 
from a motive of revenge—agree to all that is de¬ 
manded by you?” 

“We should be ruined!” exclaimed Louise, looking 
toward Janeway. 

“But such a motive,” burst out Janeway, indig¬ 
nantly, “would invalidate his consent!” 

“Yet how can we catch and label any man’s mo¬ 
tive? We should be left in doubt. I myself would 
interpellate him for you; but anything I might say 
would arouse feelings quite as violent on his part 
toward all of us. I should, in all likelihood, be ac¬ 
cused of conniving—and, to act, I must have his 
unclouded decision. May I tell you how I feel?” 
The Bishop, looking first at Louise, then at Janeway, 
addressed himself to both. “I feel that if we can 
secure an honest expression from Mr. Durand, you, 
Mrs. Durand, have nothing whatever to fear from 
interpellating him. I see what suffering the idea 
has caused you,” he said in kindly manner, to Lou¬ 
ise, “but I really believe you are torturing yourself 
unnecessarily. Mr. Durand’s characteristics are 
such, his habits of life are so flagrantly open and no¬ 
torious, that a Christian wife—any decent wife— 
would be an incubus on him.” 

“Then,” demanded Janeway impatiently, “why, 




THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


251 

if these facts are patent to the public, to the court 
itself, require this hard interpellation to be made? 
Why not dispense with it and grant this injured 
woman relief out of hand?” he asked with vehe¬ 
mence. 

“I should have more trouble in explaining to 
another than to an experienced legal mind that this 
step has long since been found by the Church neces¬ 
sary to protect the rights of all the parties at interest 
—the pagan spouse, the Christian spouse, and the 
third party who would enter into marriage with the 
latter. I need hardly tell you that when, for rea¬ 
sons founded on an experience in human affairs ex¬ 
tending over many centuries, a law has been enacted 
precisely to avoid misunderstandings and deceits, its 
provisions are not lightly to be waived. This is not 
to say they may not be waived; if such an interpel¬ 
lation, for example, were impossible, an Apostolic 
dispensation from it could be obtained. All I want 
you to realize is that my power is a delegated, not a 
plenary one; that we must move first to establish, 
then to protect the rights of this innocent woman, 
and that this must be done under the seasoned laws 
of the Church to which she has appealed. I will 
leave nothing undone to shelter her within its mer¬ 
cies—the Church will never reject the child that has 
sought its sanctuary. 

“Not,” he added clearly, “that it can always give 
to every one that pleads all he may plead for; 
but that it will give, to the uttermost farthing, all 
it may lawfully bestow on those who seek, as this 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


252 

injured woman has sought, its protection. Yet that 
certain forms of law must, in every code, be gone 
through with, I need hardly remind you, Mr. 
Janeway. The form that confronts us is one: Mrs. 
Durand must make this interpellation I have de¬ 
scribed; or we—you, I should say—must go to Rome 
and submit to the inevitable delays that follow an 
appeal to a supreme tribunal. Is it wise? Is it 
necessary ? Is it not better, for your mutual relief, 
to comply with this requirement of the only law that 
I myself can administer?” 

Seriously as the Bishop had spoken, Janeway had 
followed and had already digested every word of the 
speaker’s thought; when the Bishop finished he made 
only a further suggestion: “How about Gertrude?” 
he asked tentatively of Louise. “She might put 
these questions to Durand.” 

Louise reflected. It was evident that she, too, 
had considered and was weighing every phase of the 
situation. “Gertrude’s relations with her brother 
are already strained to the snapping point over me,” 
she replied at length. “ I can’t ask it of her. No,” 
she said hesitatingly, but as if reaching a hard deci¬ 
sion, “there is no one to do this terrible thing for 
me. I alone—I, myself—must act. But when— 
where to see and speak to him?” 

“If ’twere done, ’twere well ’twere done quickly,” 
observed Janeway, with immediate grimness. “The 
suspense is deadly. If she must interpellate this 
man as the first step toward freedom, let it be done 
at the earliest possible moment. All I ask is, not 



THE ORDEAL LOOMS 


2 53 

that I be present at their interview, but that I be in 
whatever place it is arranged. ” 

“He is in New York now,” said Louise, looking 
from one to the other of the two men. Bishop 
Marion and Janeway went into discussion concerning 
time and place. It was the Bishop’s suggestion that 
was finally adopted. 

“I think,” said he, “that all can be conveniently 
and appropriately arranged here, in this house. Mr. 
Simms knows that the Arbitration Committee meets 
here next Monday evening to receive the signatures 
of the company and the men to the new agreement. 
Mr. Durand must be here in person to sign for the 
company. The men demand it, and Judge Harrison 
and Simms have agreed he shall be here. The house 
is large; you can have ample privacy. Isn’t that the 
best? Indeed, I urge it for reasons of my own— 
reasons I cannot explain now, but which you would 
approve could I discuss them, and which, I hope, 
you will one day fully understand. Shall we say, 
then, next Monday night, here; and that you both 
come to my private entrance door in Lake Street at 
seven-thirty o’clock?” 

Even Janeway was taken a little aback at the 
businesslike promptness with which the Bishop 
wished the ordeal and the crisis—which meant so 
much in the two lives before him—faced. He looked 
toward Louise as if to ask whether she felt equal to 
what was being arranged. The expression of her 
face, as she looked down at the hand-bag she was 
toying with in her lap, reflected her distress. “Lou- 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


254 

ise?” Janeway called her name tenderly. “Fm 
afraid,” he added, as she looked at him, “you can’t 
do it.” 

All the reserve of courage in her being was mani¬ 
fest in her expression and in her words. “I must 
do it.” She rose as she spoke. Janeway and the 
Bishop rose with her. “I will go down into this 
valley. I will go alone before this—Moloch ! ” Her 
eyes, as they moved from one to the other of the 
men before her, were in themselves a moving appeal. 
“Only, pray for me, both of you,” she said steadily, 
“that I do not go in vain.” 


CHAPTER XX 


DISQUIETING NEWS 

“I’ve been practising in a new court/’ said Janeway 
to Judge Harrison on the following afternoon. The 
Harrisons had returned from the island, and the two 
men were sitting on the Judge’s terrace. 

Harrison looked sceptically at his companion. 
“ What court is new to you?” 

“An ecclesiastical court.” The Judge’s face 
showed he was still in the dark. “I suppose you 
know,” continued Janeway, without the slightest 
prelude, “or suspect, anyway—that I am in love 
with Louise Durand.” As a matter of conventional 
courtesy, Janeway waited for any comment the 
Judge might make on a subject that must always 
be considered a delicate confidence. It was not that 
Janeway expected a comment. He did not; his sur¬ 
mise that none would be forthcoming was correct— 
Judge Harrison’s face was non-committal. Janeway, 
however, knew that mask perfectly well; and knew 
pretty well most of the time what was going on be¬ 
hind it. He accordingly continued his disclosure 
without hesitation or embarrassment. “You know 
she has become a Catholic,” he went on, “and that 
makes the present question of her remarriage an ex¬ 
tremely difficult one. I have appealed—or we have 
—to Bishop Marion, and as I represent the plaintiff, 

255 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


256 

and am the plaintiff, in the case, I am considerably 
exercised over the outcome. You don’t seem in a 
hurry to wish me happiness.” * 

Judge Harrison roused himself. “ Nevertheless, I 
do wish you happiness, Janeway. You deserve it. 
It’s the elusiveness of the thing I am thinking of. 
What company, for instance, would undertake to in¬ 
sure happiness in this life? Yet we are everywhere 
confronted with the spectacle of those about us 
attempting individually that which transcends even 
corporate recklessness. So—so,” he mused, in the 
German fashion. “You and Louise, eh? Well, it 
wasn’t very r hard to see that over at the island the 
other day. Elizabeth seems to approve, so it would 
do no good for me to withhold my consent. You 
know what I think of Louise; she’s fine; as fine as 
they make ’em. In the Catholic end of it you’re 
up against a pretty stiff proposition.” 

“Fairly stiff.” 

“Can you make the grade?” 

Janeway drew himself back, after his manner 
when facing a problem. “I wish I knew,” he said. 
“Always before I have had enough detachment, 
even in the greatest difficulties, to keep from worry¬ 
ing; not so, this time.” 

“My advice to people that worry is not to worry,” 
said Harrison magisterially. “My advice to people 
that don’t worry is to worry. At Catalina once I 
met a man on a glass-bottom boat-trip, a station- 
master for the Erie Road at 23d Street. He was a 
Jew—the first I ever ran across working for a rail- 


DISQUIETING NEWS 257 

road—they know better—though I’ve met more than 
one that owned a railroad. He was a veteran in the 
service and knew Harriman, Mrs. Harriman, Roose¬ 
velt—everybody prominent in New York. He was 
worrying for fear he should lose his job. I told him 
he ought to be in no danger, and advised him not to 
worry. He looked at me with all the worldly wis¬ 
dom of his race in his anxious eyes. ‘ Mister/ he 
said impetuously, 1 that’s all right; you mean well. 
But, let me tell you—in New York the men that 
don’t worry are sitting in the park.’ 

“After that I saw the wisdom of advising men 
that don’t worry, to worry. It’s not possible, I sup¬ 
pose, I can help you—briefing, or anything?” sug¬ 
gested Judge Harrison in softly nasal irony. 

“You can help a little,” returned Janeway, some¬ 
what to the other man’s surprise. “I’m anxious,” 
he continued, “to have Durand at Bishop Marion’s 
house promptly next Monday night at eight o’clock. 
He’s to be there, you know, to sign the new wage 
agreement; for another reason, which I need not go 
into, I hope to see him there on time. You can help 
by impressing on him the importance of closing with 
the men at the Bishop’s house next Monday evening, 
without fail.” Janeway threw emphasis into his 
words. 

“Conspiracy,” muttered the Judge, chewing 
calmly his unlighted cigar. 

“A new role,” retorted Janeway, “for you.” 

“I’ll undertake to have Robert there,” acquiesced 
Harrison, quite matter-of-factly, “only stipulating 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


258 

that personal violence on the part of the ecclesiastical 
court be barred. What are you trying to do—write 
a new chapter in the canonical .jurisprudence of the 
Roman Catholic Church?” 

“I don’t know,” replied Janeway vaguely, “pre¬ 
cisely what I’m trying to do—beyond getting Durand 
at Bishop Marion’s residence next Monday evening 
at eight o’clock.” 

“I’ll begin wiring to-night,” said Harrison. “I 
think by Monday we can produce him.” 

“Meantime,” remarked Janeway precatorily, 
“keep the confidence, please; not even Elizabeth, 
Judge.” 

“Not even Elizabeth. And you,” admonished the 
Judge, “don’t torture yourself anticipating the worst. 
I’ve spent my life in jumping at conclusions, and 
most of them have been wrong.” 

“You have never failed me in a crisis,” said Jane¬ 
way simply. “Your friendship and mine is an un¬ 
clouded one of long standing. I prize it the more 
because experience has forced me to the conclusion 
—as it did Shakespeare—that most friendship is 
feigning.” 

“Friendship,” observed the Judge meditatively, 
“is a community of interests.” 

“Or,” suggested Janeway, “a community of 
tastes?” 

“Whatever it is,” responded Harrison, “it ought 
to be a community of principles. Well”—he spoke 
philosophically—“some one has said, pray as if 
everything depended on God; act as if everything 



DISQUIETING NEWS 259 

depended on yourself. Go into the thing to win, 
Janeway. If the wind gets too high, make for shore 
in good season. I went out once with an old fisher¬ 
man in Nantucket. Elizabeth was along. The 
Sound began to ruffle up. The fisherman wanted to 
head for home. Elizabeth didn’t want to go in, but 
he was set very seriously on getting ashore. She 
urged him to stick it out; quoted a line from the 
old song, ‘Is not God upon the water, just the same 
as on the land ? ’ 

‘“He is, ma’am, He is/ responded the old salt, 
with one eye on Elizabeth and the other on his tell¬ 
tale. ‘I’m free to admit He is. But with the wind 
settin’ in that particular quarter, ma’am, ’tain’t so 
much with me a question of where Ee is as where / 
am.’” 

The Judge continued in gently nasal tones to give 
Janeway the benefit of his reflections. “I don’t 
know much about Catholics myself. Elizabeth con¬ 
siders them—taken by and large,” explained the 
Judge apologetically, “somewhat smelly. But I tell 
her that will all be remedied when they ‘ Gather with 
the saints at the ri-ver—That flows by the throne 
of God.’” 

Janeway seemed too absorbed to respond. “The 
only thing I have against them,” Judge Harrison 
continued calmly, “is that their priests are mostly 
a—a—queer-looking lot. What?” 

This suggestion drew from Janeway the desired 
rise. He responded in judicial appraisement of the 
Judge’s observation. 


2 6o 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“I used to think so myself! I thought precisely 
the same thing,” he concurred, with emphasis, “and 
they are —a good many of them—a homely lot. 
But,” he asked flatly, “what can you do? Did 
Christ hunt up Apollos when he was looking for 
apostles? Fishermen are not usually handsome 
men. Peter wouldn’t get very far in a beauty show. 
And certainly Paul wasn’t drafted by the Lord be¬ 
cause of his manly beauty. 

“No,” he went on, with gathering conviction. 
“I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a bad sign for any 
religion when its favorite leaders, its clergymen and 
preachers, are handsome men—men notable for fine, 
strong features, good physique, and rich, persuasive 
voices. Such a state of affairs is a result, not a 
cause. It is due to the fact that a sect has nothing 
stronger than the personality of attractive men to 
kindle the interest of its adherents. The cynics grin 
when a handsome preacher makes a hit; and in this 
instance the grin has a basis of justification. Com¬ 
pare the picture of the dilettante, delicate-handed, 
snowy-banded priest held up to scorn by Tennyson, 
with the common, imperfect, knock-about, rough- 
and-ready men of the wide-spread Catholic priest¬ 
hood—dressed in shabby w T ear; queer-looking, if you 
like—fat, squatty, angular, thin, just as they come; 
always comprehensible, usually dependable, no frills, 
nothing esoteric, just plain, every-day, cold-in- 
the-head servants of the Most High God. God 
help the religion whose heroes need to be handsome 
men! ” 



DISQUIETING NEWS 261 

Janeway did not see Louise until Thursday. She 
was in Chicago that morning with Gertrude. Ger¬ 
trude called Janeway up from Field’s to lunch with 
them. He found he could not, but clung to the 
telephone conversation, and at length, by agreeing 
to send Kennedy as a substitute, got Louise on the 
wire, and, under the plea of having something im¬ 
portant to say, got her to promise, if Gertrude would 
accompany her, to come over a moment to his office. 
The two women took a car down-stairs and drove to 
Adams and Clark. They were received by Ken¬ 
nedy’s secretary and ushered into Janeway’s office. 
Kennedy was in conference with Janeway. 

The conference ceased. “ You’re going to lunch 
with us, Jim,” said Gertrude. 

“Second choice, eh?” 

“Not with me, silly. I hope you wouldn’t expect 
to be first with everybody?” 

“If I hadn’t found a mistake of a hundred dollars 
in my favor in my bank-account this morning, I 
couldn’t do it, anyway.” 

“That won’t help much, Jim; we’ve decided to 
lunch in Michigan Avenue.” 

“What are you two fussing about?” asked Louise, 
turning from her talk with Janeway to get away 
from his eyes. 

Kennedy looked at her. “When you write my 
epitaph, Mrs. Durand,” he said gravely, “let it be 
brief: ‘Always short.’ One o’clock, I suppose?” 

“What was it important you had to tell me?” 
asked Louise of Janeway. 


262 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Come over here by the window,” suggested 
Janeway, leading the way. 

“I don’t believe you have a thing,” declared Lou¬ 
ise, following him doubtfully. “You don’t act as if 
you had.” 

“It’s something quite important, though not im¬ 
portant at this moment. I saw Bishop Marion last 
night. He asked me to have you bring him that last 
letter from your aunt regarding your never having 
been baptized. And I have supplied him with all 
the other affidavits he has requested concerning the 
non-baptisms. He seems to attach great impor¬ 
tance to that point. I don’t quite see myself what 
difference it makes; but I’ve won some desperate 
cases on seemingly inconsequential points.” 

Janeway’s secretary appeared at the office door. 
“Mr. King, Mr. Janeway.” 

“I'll see him in a moment,” said Janeway, as 
Kennedy and Gertrude passed out into Kennedy’s 
office. 

“Who,” murmured Louise, as the secretary re¬ 
tired, “is Mr. King?” 

“Will King is President of the Standard Oil Com¬ 
pany. An important thing,” continued Janeway, 
pursuing his topic, “for every moment from now till 
next Monday night, is not to worry over the situa¬ 
tion. I feel,” he added, with a confidence real or 
assumed, “ that everything will come out right.” 

Louise looked at him incredulously. “You don’t 
really?” 

“I do.” 


DISQUIETING NEWS 263 

She drew a breath of relief. “ You certainly know 
how to inspire confidence.” 

“That’s the way I earn my living. And my confi¬ 
dence expands enormously whenever you come in 
sight. You’re so—so trim, so pretty; you appeal to 
all the senses at once. First, you charm the eye; 
then there’s a faint, indefinable fragrance in your 
presence-” 

Louise rose. “The President of the Standard Oil 
Company is waiting.” 

“Let him wait,” retorted Janeway. “I hadn’t 
finished. To continue-” 

“But you’re not going to continue,” declared Lou¬ 
ise firmly. “You’ve said too much already. Next 
it will be my hat, and then my hair—that takes a 
long time—and then my hands and my feet—and 
my suit—all ‘impinging,’ as you say, on the valuable 
time of the President of the Standard Oil Company.” 

Janeway looked closely at her, and pointed his 
words with a finger pantomime. “Louise,” he said 
earnestly, “I want to ask you just one question.” 

“What is it?” 

“If Will King were in here talking to you and I 
were out there waiting to get in—how long do you 
suppose he’d keep me cooling my heels before he 
rang?” 

“Suppose we ask him?” suggested Louise, retreat¬ 
ing toward the door of Kennedy’s office. She raised 
her arm and with a fast-waving hand said good-by. 
“Which of these doors is the right one?” she asked. 
“I don’t want to collide with poor Mr. King.” 







THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


264 

“You never were more tantalizing in your life,” 
protested Janeway. “I’ll let you go if you 11 do 
something. It’s too nice a day to lose. Get through 
with your shopping in time for the three-o’clock 
train; Ill make it, too. Well get off at Cedar Point 
and motor home—it’s only thirty miles.” 

“How many times in thirty miles will you want 
to stop and talk to the waves?” 

He made a grimace of impatience. “Will you? 
That’s a good girl. I’ll ’phone Adolph to meet us 
at the Point with the roadster.” 

Janeway at Cedar Point took the wheel from 
Adolph, who boarded the train, and with Louise be¬ 
side him had driven half-way to Fond du Lac, when 
a turn in the road brought them to the edge of the 
lake. Janeway stopped the car, and, giving way, 
Louise walked with him out to the beach. The sun 
was well down and a tonic north wind filled their nos¬ 
trils as they reached the edge of the waves, curling 
in long, even swells up the sands. 

Louise laughed. “A beach always makes me 
think of the first story I ever heard about you; it 
gave me an idea of your terrible temper.” 

“What could that have been?” demanded Jane¬ 
way calmly. 

“You took a big touring car down to Florida one 
winter. It was very heavy. You had trouble with 
it all the time. Finally, one day you were driving 
with friends along the beach, and the car stuck in 
the sand. Nobody could budge it. In great wrath 



DISQUIETING NEWS 265 

you despatched your chauffeur for another car, put 
your party into it, drove off and left your big car 
there for good.” 

“I hope it’s there yet,” remarked Janeway, facing 
her unabashed. 

“What an absurd thing for a great lawyer to do !” 

“Don’t make fun of me. You know what a hum¬ 
bug I am, anyway, don’t you?” 

They sat down on a ledge where the waves had 
undermined the turf. “No, I don’t know,” pro¬ 
tested Louise promptly. “You must be a great 
lawyer. I’ve been hearing about it ever since I 
knew you. ‘ Remarkably subtle mind; extraordinary 
grasp on constitutional questions; exceptional as a 
trial lawyer’!” 

“What nonsense you know it all to be !” 

“No, I don’t!” she insisted. “Haven’t I heard 
these judges that go fishing with Uncle Sidney talk ? 
And somehow”—she was poking the point of her 
sunshade into the wet sand—“my ears are so wide 
open when your name comes up. And I say to my¬ 
self, I don’t care how subtle his mind is—or how 
much he knows about the Constitution—or how 
much he sways a jury-” 

“Make me out as silly as you can.” 

“That’s all.” 

“No, you hadn’t finished. Go on.” 

Louise was in no hurry to proceed. “If you have 
such a remarkably subtle mind,” she said compla¬ 
cently, “you can guess the rest.” 

“How much is there to it?” 



266 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


With her sunshade she was drawing dancing 
dolls in the sand. “Just four words,” she said 
finally. 

He could get no more from her, but she promised 
to tell him some time. When he called up late that 
evening, she thought the telephone w T as not the 
proper medium for at least one of the words. 

“I hope it’s not a swear word,” he said reprov¬ 
ingly. 

Her reply followed a slight pause. “I’m afraid it 
is, in a way. At least, many people swear by it.” 

Before train time, in the morning, a note addressed 
in a hand he recognized by instinct was brought to 
his apartment. It bore a “Personal” caution above 
his name. He slit open the envelope, and found an 
unsigned correspondence card. On it was written in 
a small, fast-flowing hand: 

“I’m awfully sorry I made that promise last night. 
You wheedled it out of me with that jury-fixing way 
of yours. Now, it makes me feel very silly indeed. 
But, since I promised: when I hear all these non¬ 
sensical things about you, I say to myself: I don’t 
care; he loves me, anyway .” 

He neglected his morning paper, and having no 
prospect of seeing Louise that day, he called up, as 
the next best thing, her brother George, and asked 
him to take lunch at the Lawyers’ Club. At the 
table he reproached George for neglecting to run up 
to see his sister oftener, and having done so, told 
him the story of his hopes. 

George listened with interest. He was pleased. 


DISQUIETING NEWS 267 

But he made little of the difficulties that Janeway 
confessed confronted him. “If you want her, take 
her !” he exclaimed. “No institution should step in 
between a man and a woman that want to live to¬ 
gether. And a man and a woman should live to¬ 
gether only till they’re tired of each other—no 
longer.” 

“But suppose one tires and the other doesn’t?” 

“That minute,” declared George emphatically, 
“they should quit.” 

“So,” commented Janeway, “when a man sees a 
woman he likes better than the first one he has 
picked on, he should desert Number One for Num¬ 
ber Two—Number Two for Number Three—and so 
on down the line.” 

“Just that!” exclaimed Louise’s brother. “And 
for a woman, exactly the same privilege. An iron¬ 
clad marriage contract is a curse to human nature. 
If you want people to be happy, leave men and 
women as free as birds of the air to mate when and 
where and with whom they choose, and as often as 
they choose.” 

“But, George,” said Janeway composedly, “would 
you give me such a privilege as that with your own 
sister? Would you condemn a woman like Louise 
to the filth of that kind of a sex barnyard?” 

“Let the woman that wants to keep out of it, 
keep out.” 

“That’s not the way your soviet heroes talk in 
Russia. They’re drafting women in Russia, George. 
When a man wants a woman, they profess to ‘need’ 



268 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

her, for the ‘service of the state’ in their soviet 
barnyard.” 

Fargo shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not responsi¬ 
ble for what’s done in Russia. I want men and wo¬ 
men to be free.” 

“Durand ought to be a good recruit for your 
ideas,” suggested Janeway, meditating, “and the 
bigger you make your barnyard the more popular it 
will be with the Simmses and Durands of your com¬ 
monwealth. Well, here’s to your sex barnyard, 
George ! May it flourish in your servile state! 

“But I think I can safely say that at least one 
Fargo of your family and one Janeway of mine will 
never avail themselves of its freedom!” 

It was only after he returned to the office that he 
learned from Kennedy that the Durand Steel Com¬ 
pany had passed its dividend. This was not reas¬ 
suring, in view of the large cash settlement asked for 
Louise, to which he was holding Durand. But more 
disquieting was the further news that Kennedy had 
had the night before from Gertrude Durand. Bob, 
she told him, had quarrelled and, she thought, broken 
with Maymie Montgomery. And as an anticlimax 
came news under a scare-head in the evening papers 
that Mrs. Simms had brought suit for divorce, with 
the revolting particular that she had named, among 
others in her bill, her Wheaton relative. 

Reaching Fond du Lac late, hot, quite tired, and 
grown serious with the day’s developments, a tele¬ 
gram, as he stepped from the train, was put in Jane- 
way’s hands. 


DISQUIETING NEWS 269 

He tore it open on the platform; it was from Ken¬ 
nedy. 

“Final decree in the Durand-Durand case came 
down late this afternoon. Property settlement gives 
Mrs. Durand practically everything asked for. 
Copy ready for you in the morning. Either party 
may remarry at any time. Congratulations ! ” 

From his apartment Janeway despatched a mes¬ 
senger, enclosing the message to Louise. 


CHAPTER XXI 
CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


On Saturday night Janeway had a political meeting 
to address in Chicago. Uneasy over the develop¬ 
ments in his own particular concerns, the task of 
speaking seemed an especially onerous one. But the 
meeting was meant to launch the Harding campaign 
in the Middle West, and demanded his best possible 
effort; its success was deemed vital. 

The night proved insufferably warm, but the audi¬ 
torium was packed. Despite the weather handicap 
and his own mental anxieties, Janeway, whose sym¬ 
pathies were enlisted in the signal defeat of the in¬ 
cumbent administration, rose to the occasion. 
Never a strong partisan, his detachment on ordinary 
issues lent force to his present appeal, and in the 
eight years of Mr. Wilson’s record in the White 
House he found ample material for his purpose. 
His facts, chosen strictly with a view to their cumu¬ 
lative force, concealed his bitterness skilfully, and 
with his energy carefully in hand, Jane way, in speak¬ 
ing, seemed the frankest and most disinterested man 
in the huge gathering. 

Simms had come down with Judge Harrison to 
see how the thing went off. His first expression of 
opinion was given in reply to a prod from Harrison 

270 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


271 

as the two left the platform. “The mildest-man¬ 
nered man/’ quoted Simms vindictively, “that ever 
scuttled ship or cut a throat.” 

Harrison’s comment was dry: “ All throats should 
be cut and all ships scuttled in that fashion; it’s the 
most effective. He certainly bored into your craft 
to-night.” 

“Jury talk—jury talk, Janeway,” sputtered 
Simms impatiently, as the three men sat down to 
supper. 

“If every case I’ve had to lay before a jury had 
as much merit as that, my juries wouldn’t have to 
leave the box,” remarked Janeway. 

“Why can’t you come out square in the open and 
fight clean and aboveboard?” demanded Simms, 
with indignation. 

“There are several answers to that,” returned 
Janeway lazily. “The first is, it’s too hot.” 

“You appeared to have ’em with you to-night, 
Henry,” observed Harrison, biting his cigar. 

“A man that couldn’t talk on that subject,” ex¬ 
claimed Janeway, “would have to be born in darkest 
America. I’m no patriot; but any man, after he’s 
been robbed, and bludgeoned, into the bargain, will 
talk.” 

Jane way had intended to stay at the club, but 
Harrison persuaded him the heat was such that he 
could not sleep in the city, anyway. He finally ac¬ 
cepted Harrison’s suggestion that he ride to Fond du 
Lac with Simms and himself in Harrison’s car. Still 
warm from his work, Janeway took the seat with 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


272 

the chauffeur, and, lapsing into silence, gave little 
heed to the talk in the tonneau. He had enough to 
think about. And the stars were good company. 
The travellers had looked for a deserted roadstead, 
but the highway was packed with cars the whole 
way home. They reached Fond du Lac drowsy but 
cooled, just as the east was brightening with the 
new day. 

Janeway, still keyed up from his effort, slept un¬ 
easily and for only a few hours. At breakfast a 
sudden resolve seized him—to go to church. And 
next to go to the procathedral, because there he 
might see Louise. He was to be at Gertrude’s in 
the evening for dinner, but the intervening hours 
bulked before him like an age. 

When he reached the church, High Mass was un¬ 
der way. The usher he met in the vestibule proved 
a local acquaintance whom Janeway knew but could 
not place, and who, with a quick smile, beckoned the 
chance visitor to come with him. Janeway would 
have sought an inconspicuous place, but it was im¬ 
possible, without running, to catch up with his 
guide to ask for one. To his great annoyance the 
young man, treating him as an exhibit, led him on 
and on down the crowded centre aisle, till Janeway, 
red in the face, found himself seated within a few 
pews of the altar-rail. Unluckily, too, the pew- 
holder whose hospitality had been invoked in his 
behalf knew Janeway, and the efforts on his part to 
make the unexpected guest feel at home made him 
feel the less so. From the choir-loft came the mar- 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


273 

tial strains of the Gloria. But by giving his at¬ 
tention with ostentatious correctness to what Har¬ 
rison would have termed “the proceedings” at the 
high altar, Janeway gradually cooled, and, as he 
did so, recovered his poise. 

By that time the pulpit had been rolled to the 
front, and a young clergyman was reading the an¬ 
nouncements. Janeway listened to the opening of 
the sermon, mentally following and changing at 
times the words and phrases of the youthful orator, 
but sympathetic to the simplicity of his presenta¬ 
tion. Then his mind wandered, and he recalled the 
last time—some years earlier—that he had been in 
that church. It was at the funeral of an elderly 
man, a client. Janeway had drawn his will, and 
the family asked Janeway to be a pall-bearer, be¬ 
cause of the friendship the dead man had felt for 
him. 

The incident had fixed itself in Janeway’s mind 
because of an unusual circumstance. The dead man 
had failed in Fond du Lac in business. It had been 
a bad failure and a compromise with the creditors. 
The man had been, through Janeway’s efforts, 
legally freed from his debts. Years afterward a 
strange thing—at least in Janeway’s experience—had 
happened. The man, succeeding then very well, had 
come and told him he wished to make further pay¬ 
ments to his old creditors, until they should receive, 
when and as he was able, a hundred cents on the 
dollar for their claims. Janeway had notified the 
creditors, widely scattered, and a large initial pay- 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


274 

ment had been made, when death had knocked at 
the heart of his client, and, dying, he had told every¬ 
thing to his lawyer, because it then became a neces¬ 
sity. 

In his old failure the man, now long dead, had 
concealed an item in his assets. It had never been 
found out—never would be, Janeway had told him 
—but the client was bent on making complete resti¬ 
tution, and now committed the unfinished amend to 
his two grown sons. Janeway was made solemnly 
to promise that, so far as in him lay, he would see 
that the dead man’s sons carried out their father’s 
dying injunction—though they were never to know 
the real reason for it; Janeway had urged that they 
should not. 

The two sons, strong men, had faithfully co-op¬ 
erated in the discharge of the debt. It left Janeway 
now only to recall the strictness of the dying man’s 
code, and how a sort of death agony of humiliation 
had beaded his brow in the moment he found him¬ 
self forced to confess to his attorney a shameful de¬ 
linquency. 

The sermon was ended—though it happened it 
was the dead man who had preached to Janeway’s 
somewhat cynical views, formed among men of large 
affairs, on conscientious scruples. And Janeway 
now recollected it was the younger of his friend’s 
two sons who had ushered him to an honorable seat 
before the altar, and the older who had welcomed 
him to the family pew. 

The Mass had been resumed when Janeway’s mind 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


275 

returned to the scene before him. He wondered 
whether Louise might be in the church, but the per- 
fervid usher had placed him where he could see but 
few of the congregation. The music of the Credo 
reached his ears; then the dignity of the function at 
the altar, as the officiating priest reached the Canon 
of the Mass, held his interest. With the coming of 
the Sanctus he heard the strident warning of an 
altar-bell. The solemn moment of the celebration 
was at hand, and the hush that spread over the 
crowded nave reacted on Janeway. 

He shared, without knowing why, in the suspense 
of the waiting multitude of which he had made him¬ 
self one. He watched, without understanding, the 
priest bow low, in the words of the consecration, and 
suddenly kneel, while the acolyte struck the bell 
again. He saw the heads bowed about him as the 
Host was elevated. It was as if he had for a mo¬ 
ment participated in some strange new sensation, 
some mystery never before touched on. He fell 
musing on what his new feeling might be, surrendered 
an instant to its restfulness, and only the music of 
the Agnus Dei, storming heaven with its plea, 
brought him uncertainly back to his surroundings. 

Abandoned to his dreaming mood, seeing and 
hearing what his eyes and ears filmed before his 
senses, yet with his mind wandering to the battle¬ 
fields of France, back to the altar and then to Louise, 
he sat, half in trance, until the priest, turning toward 
him, held the Host aloft and repeated the words of 
the Domine , non sum dignus , while an acolyte, walk- 


276 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

ing down to the rail, threw over it the communion 
cloth. 

A burst of music fell upon Janeway’s ears. With 
the unison of many voices rising higher and still 
higher in the pleading of the Agnus Dei, the thun¬ 
ders of the organ rolled down the long nave. He 
heard, breaking in on this, the harsh clang of the 
sanctuary bell. Then he was conscious of a hush 
among the people, and his ear caught a quick fem¬ 
inine step in the aisle—a slender figure, that of a 
youthful woman, her veil half raised, passed him rap¬ 
idly and knelt at the foot of the sanctuary steps. 
It was Louise. 

Janeway’s shock, the thrill of watching her walk 
up alone before the silent congregation in an act of 
humility and faith, blended into the solemnity of the 
scene. The hush of the watching multitude under 
the prayer of the swelling music, the priest coming 
slowly down from the altar, bearing the ciborium 
and the Host, held him motionless. He saw Louise 
rise, ascend the steps, and kneel at the sanctuary 
rail to receive the Holy Eucharist. 

He had seen this woman who had so entered his 
life, in many aspects of loveliness—to him; under 
many circumstances moving—to him; in many moods 
that ministered to every wish of his heart, that stilled 
with hope every desire of his being; yet in none of 
these had she seemed quite as she now seemed, kneel¬ 
ing alone before him at the altar; it was as if a cur¬ 
tain never before raised had been lifted; as if, him¬ 
self unseen, he had for an instant looked into her soul. 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


277 

He passed out as the congregation passed out, saw 
Louise kneeling, with head bowed, in a seat well 
down the aisle, and waited outside in the sunshine. 
When she appeared she half tripped down the cathe¬ 
dral steps, laughing at seeing him. She bore in on 
his stiff seriousness, as she always did when care 
free, with bantering questions. She seemed to bring 
out something pleasant but only rudimentary in his 
nature. Her light-heartedness, her buoyancy of 
spirit, knocked at something dormant, something 
neglected, but something that could be awakened, in 
his own nature, and, whatever it was, pleasant to 
feel. In a few moments she could change his mood, 
put new thoughts into his head, lift his spirits, nat¬ 
urally sober, to her own. 

“You must have covered yourself with glory last 
night,” she said, as they started to walk home. 

“I covered myself with perspiration. It was fear¬ 
fully close. I hope the election won’t be like it.” 

“The morning papers featured you.” 

“Not for any love of me; they want Harding 
elected.” 

“It was a dreadful photograph of you. But”— 
she lifted her eyes to his for just an instant—“I was 
awfully proud. Gertrude and I were sorry we hadn’t 
gone down.” 

“If you’d been there I should have forgotten my 
speech.” 

“It was so warm I lay awake nearly all night, any¬ 
way. Then I overslept this morning and missed the 
early Masses.” 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


278 

“That was for my particular benefit.” He turned 
to her as they walked. “It amazes me, how little I 
think of outside you. When I leave you, it’s only 
to wonder when I shall see you again.” 

“Heavens!” she exclaimed. She was looking 
straight ahead to break the gathering force of his 
words, and saw an unwelcome sight. “There comes 
Mr. Simms.” 

Janeway, too, was annoyed, but turned it off. “If 
he carries any tales I’ll kill him,” he said evenly. 

Simms greeted them effusively. He stopped a 
moment to abuse Janeway for his talk at the audi¬ 
torium and moved on. Janeway hung on till he 
reached Gertrude’s. Louise could not do otherwise 
than ask him in. Indeed, she was little loath to 
cling to his company. Gertrude had not come down¬ 
stairs, and Janeway sat in the dining-room while 
Louise took her rolls and coffee. 

“Sure you won’t have a cup—just a little one?” 
she asked, more than once—partly for hospitality 
and largely in an effort to divert his mind from an 
all-pervading interest in everything she was doing. 
He declined refreshment, but walked with her out 
into the garden. They sat down in the shade of the 
pergola. 

“Will Simms do us any harm?” Louise asked. 
She was sitting close beside him, in the lee, as it 
were, of his arm; he had thrown it along the back of 
the bench and sat half facing her. She, in the sheer¬ 
est of white, tried not to be self-conscious, but Jane¬ 
way, however quiet, made the effort an unremitting 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


279 

one. When she asked her question, his eyes hap¬ 
pened to be bent on her hands, folded very simply 
in her lap. And when he made no answer, she re¬ 
peated her question. “Will Simms, do you think, 
do us any harm?” 

“All he can,” he returned contemptuously. “How 
nice and cool you look,” he added. 

“I am cool. Your suit is too heavy for to-day, 
isn’t it?” 

“I always forget to change. Where did you get 
such hands?” 

“Isn’t it terrible to want to make trouble for 
others?” 

Janeway half laughed. “I’m going to play golf 
with him this afternoon. And I’m going to hand 
him a poser myself.” 

“What kind of a poser?” 

He regarded her with quizzical benevolence. 
“Gertrude has invited me for dinner. I’ll tell you 
to-night.” 

At dinner Kennedy joined them. Gertrude and 
he sat down with Louise and Janeway. Afterward 
Kennedy and Gertrude went for a drive. Louise 
and Janeway walked in the summer night up the 
lake front, and, returning, sought the coolness of the 
garden. Only twenty-four hours lay between them 
and the crisis of their lives, and its impending 
weighed, despite the efforts of each to conceal from 
the other the strain both felt. “ It’s no use, I guess,” 
said Janeway at last. “We’re trying to talk and 


28 o 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


think about everything but what we actually are 
thinking of, if not talking about; I would to-morrow 
night were past!” 

“You were going to tell me what you said to 
Simms.” 

“Then first I must tell you why I said it. A new 
complication arose yesterday. I said nothing about 
it for fear it should worry you; don’t let it—any 
more than you can help, anyway. Durand has quar¬ 
relled with Mrs. Montgomery, I hear. That makes 
our situation somewhat more delicate—if anything 
can,” he added with gentle irony. “So I injected 
another factor into the case to-day. I said to Simms: 
‘ Simms, I’m beginning to feel Bob Durand and I 
both made a mistake in quarrelling. I’m going to 
tell him so at the first opportunity. Is there any 
good reason why we shouldn’t resume our old rela¬ 
tions ? 

“Simms was struck dumb. You can imagine how 
that set on him. His head will whirl like a merry- 
go-round till he can get Durand’s ear and warn him 
I’ve got something dangerous up my sleeve. In 
point of fact, I have, but not of the sort he supposes. 

“With that astonishing overture planted, their 
minds will be in confusion for a day, at least; in it 
we may escape; I wish to God I knew!” 

Louise drew herself up a little and took a breath 
as if of resolve. She looked at him with something 
of the affection she usually guarded so closely. 

“Whatever comes, Henry,” she said quietly, “I 
can never be grateful enough for your patient re- 


CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


281 


straint. If nothing else had touched my heart, that 
would. From the very first you’ve been, every mo¬ 
ment, considerate! Don’t imagine I don’t realize 
it; don’t imagine—” Afraid to go too far, she 
checked herself as quickly as she had begun. “It’s 
out of fashion nowadays in love-making, you know,” 
she said, with a hard laugh. 

“ Yes, I do know,” he answered simply. “I realize 
how foolish I should seem, tried by present-day 
standards. ‘If you want her,’ says even as wise a 
man as Judge Harrison, ‘ tear her silly religious scru¬ 
ples away from her—they’re out of date—carry her 
off !’ ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘I’ve thought of that, too. 
I’m not an expert at love-making. And it may be 
that if another type of woman were in question, I 
might forcibly abduct her. But I’m not interested 
in a mere abduction. I want to live my whole life 
with the woman I love. I want her to be happy— 
otherwise I can’t be. To separate her with violence 
from her matured convictions in the most vital of 
concerns, after what she has already been through, 
might work for a while. But should I really have 
the same woman I loved? Or altogether another 
sort of woman?’ 

“When I was young in the law I used to tie men 
up for my clients in contracts so tight they couldn’t 
breathe; I never do that any more. Men will sign; 
but if the agreements are too violently one-sided 
they won’t stick. 

“I think,” he went on, “a man would be a poor 
manager—he’d be a mighty poor judge of human 



282 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


nature, and that means a poor lawyer—if, on catch¬ 
ing a humming-bird and a hawk, he were to treat 
them both alike. You might starve the hawk, com¬ 
mon style, into tameness; but the humming-bird 
would die. I don’t see what I have to gain by do¬ 
ing violence to mine; I want her exactly what she 
is—not turned into a hawk. She might, some time, 
sink her claws into me!” 

Wrapped in thought, Janeway, while Louise made 
comment, looked out across the garden. In a mo¬ 
ment he laughed. “What is it?” she asked. 

“I was just thinking,” returned Janeway, “when 
I get to heaven-” 

“Oh!” exclaimed Louise, “you expect to get there, 
then ? ” 

“Well, for my trial, at least; I understand every 
man is to have his ‘last day’ in court. I want to 
ask God just one question. I want to turn my eyes 
back for once on the ruck of men and women that 
incumber this earth, and say: ‘How did You stand 
them?’” 

Louise laughed. “I shouldn’t dare ask Him that.” 

“Why not?” 

“He might ask: ‘How did I stand you 

She saw, despite his raillery, how his anxiety was 
centred on what confronted them in the interpella¬ 
tion. “You’ve borne it all so well,” she said, “and 
you’ve done nothing to deserve all this. I feel like 
a wretch to inflict it on you.” 

His hand covered hers. “My only fear once was 
that you might refuse to ‘ inflict ’ your difficulties on 



CAN I WIN AGAIN? 


283 

me. Even now I suffer more suspense for you, if 
possible, than for myself—though I can’t think of 
us any more as two; I think of us only as one. If I 
am anxious, if I am sometimes worried-” 

“I know more than you think how it has weighed 
on you.” 

“If it has, it’s because it’s all so strange, so un¬ 
accustomed in my life; it’s because it stirs depths 
that I never knew were within me till I loved you. 
Then, when I think coolly of it, and of my chances, 
Louise—” He checked himself. “Why should I 
say this to you?” 

She resented his forbearance. “I want to hear 
everything.” 

“Sometimes I feel like a gambler—a gambler who, 
staking all on the fickle turn of a card, has played 
the game year after year and won; a gambler who 
looks back now, awed, at the wrecks on every side, 
that sat at the same table with him, laid the same 
stake, success, on the same card—and lost! 

“And now”—his fingers closed over hers—“I 
grope forward again bringing in my hand—not as 
steady as it used to be—my old stake, success ! And 
this time I bring with it my only chance for hap¬ 
piness—my life—and I bring it to the table to take 
the last chance on the last card that can ever turn 
for me in this world-” 

“Don’t say that!” 

“But I do say it! And I say to myself: Is it even 
possible I can win again?” 






CHAPTER XXII 


LOUISE AWAITS DURAND 

Twenty-four hours later Bishop Marion’s residence 
was well lighted. Its evening appearance indicated 
something like a reception. But it was not to be, 
in the conventional sense of the word, a reception, 
although, as Judge Harrison, accompanying the two 
solemn arbitrators, remarked in nasal undertones to 
his cigar, “matters of great pith and moment” were 
to go forward that night within those walls. 

Harrison, in fact, with the representatives of the 
men and of the company, was the first that evening 
to ring the Bishop’s bell and to be received into the 
public office. While the Arbitration Board, made 
complete by the Bishop, were examining their find¬ 
ings for the final signatures, the door-bell rang the 
second time. The man-servant answering the sum¬ 
mons received Simms, as Durand’s attorney, and 
Durand himself. 

They were shown into the reception-room and 
told that the Bishop would join them in a moment. 
The man, retiring, closed the door behind him. 

Durand was neither in an amiable frame of mind 
nor in a waiting mood. The issue of the wage con¬ 
troversy had gone somewhat against him, and had 
added to his personal and corporate annoyance. 

284 


LOUISE AWAITS DURAND 


285 

Ignoring the parting invitation of the passive ser¬ 
vant to be seated, he strode almost truculently from 
one to another of the pictures on the walls, inspecting 
them with rapid and impatient disdain, and glanc¬ 
ing with querulous eyes in one direction after another 
as he heard the sound of footsteps outside the closed 
doors of the room—for the Bishop’s house was large 
and his visitors, on occasion, numerous; arrange¬ 
ments for the receiving of different parties without 
intruding one on the other had long been studied 
and pretty well perfected. 

But on this evening an exception had been made 
to the careful arrangements for front-door entries. 
One of his expected guests the Bishop had thought 
entitled to even more protection from possible con¬ 
tretemps. The young woman, on whose shoulders 
he had laid, in the discharge of his office, the heavy 
duty of interpellating a gross and revengeful hus¬ 
band, he considered entitled to his own household en¬ 
trance by the inconspicuous door of the side street. 

There, Louise, accompanied by Gertrude, whom 
she had begged to come with her, and by Janeway, 
was received by Father Smyth, the Bishop’s secre¬ 
tary, and shown into a small anteroom to await 
Bishop Marion, when he should be ready to sum¬ 
mon her for her ordeal. This anteroom communi¬ 
cated with the reception-room in which Durand was 
then waiting; it might easily have been the sound of 
his wife’s or Janeway’s footsteps that Durand at one 
moment impatiently heard. But the house was old 
and honestly built, and its walls and doors gave no 


286 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


echo to voices. The Bishop’s sister appeared in a 
moment. When she left the room she took Ger¬ 
trude with her. 

Durand, finding nothing to please him in his sur¬ 
roundings, turned on Simms. “Well, where is this 
meeting here to-night?” he snapped. 

“In the Bishop’s office, I suppose.” 

“Why don’t we go in there? What’s all this red 
tape for? I thought you said they’d be waiting for 
us!” 

Each question came sharper than the last. Simms 
knew there was nothing to do, but felt called on to 
get up out of the comfortable chair he had settled in 
and pace the floor a little himself. “I guess they 
are waiting for us,” he said defensively, “but we’ll 
have to wait here till the Bishop takes us in.” 

“Takes us in!” retorted Durand. “I’ll say so! 
Five hundred thousand dollars a year added to our 
pay-roll. Then this divorce settlement gouge ! And 
you thought you’d get rid of her for nothing!” 

His words made Simms sulky. “You’re lucky she 
didn’t cost you an even million. If Janeway’d had 
his way, you’d not have got off so light.” 

Durand’s lips tightened. “I’ll get back at that 
fellow some time.” 

“Watch him till you do. He made a mighty 
queer crack at me yesterday. It made me think 
he’s got some kind of home-brew fixing for both of 
us. He’s sticking mighty close to your wife. I saw 
’em out yesterday together.” 

“Sticking close to a fifty-per-cent fee,” said Du- 


LOUISE AWAITS DURAND 287 

rand. “I saw him out myself yesterday morning 
with a classy dame.” 

“ Where?” 

“In Lake Street.” 

“What time?” 

“About eleven o’clock; I was driving down Fifth.” 

“That was your wife with Janeway.” 

“What?” 

Durand’s exclamation expressed his incredulity. 
“Great Scott, man,” demanded Simms peevishly, 
“don’t you know your own wife when you see her?” 

“Was that Louise ? Well! ” Durand half laughed. 
“Queening up, ain’t she?” 

“ She always was a queen. I never could see what 
you wanted to throw her over for,” observed Simms, 
willing to return to Durand something of his own 
daily portion of ill-humor at his employer’s hands. 

Durand only made a mouth. “She’s caught the 
style.” 

“If you’d held on to a wife like that, your lady 
friends wouldn’t all be hounding you to marry ’em.” 

“Oh, hell!” Whatever Durand meant to add to 
an inelegant expletive was cut short. Bishop Marion 
opened the hall door. 

“Well, Bishop,” said Simms, in his naturally pom¬ 
pous manner, and after the rather stiff greetings, 
“we’re—er—ready to meet the Board and—er— 
clean this thing up. Sooner the better, eh?” 

“You will find the Board members and Judge 
Harrison in my office. Come this way, please.” 

The meeting in the Bishop’s office, requiring the 



288 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


signatures of the parties at interest, was formal and 
not prolonged, but to Louise and her companion the 
moments dragged with leaden feet. Janeway used 
the tactics he had so often employed with a client 
when waiting for a verdict, that is, he kept going a 
series of remarks neither frivolous nor serious, choos¬ 
ing subjects to divert, if possible, her mind and his 
own. 

“It’s a curious fact,” he said, musing, when other 
topics had failed, and staring in an absent-minded 
way at the high, bare walls of the little room in 
which the two were cooped, with two small chairs 
and a very small table. “I never come into this old 
house without feeling better when I go away from 
it. And somehow I feel that’s just what’s going to 
happen to-night.” 

Louise smiled. It was a smile of sympathy for 
him, such sympathy as a woman is capable of ex¬ 
pressing for a man she has learned to love, even at a 
moment when she herself is the greater sufferer; such 
as a woman is capable of feeling for one loved, even 
at a moment that she immolates herself on the altar 
of their mutual affection. Women can do these 
things; if men ever can, it is because they have 
learned how from women. 

“I wish I had your courage,” she said, in simple 
reply. 

Janeway reached across the table. “Your hands 
are cold.” 

“I shouldn’t mind that if my knees would keep 
still.” 


LOUISE AWAITS DURAND 289 

“I wish I could put mine under you,” exclaimed 
Janeway, “ though they might carry you too far or 
too fast for your work to-night. But simply be 
composed, Louise, in what you say. And say only 
what the Bishop requires you to say. Don’t say too 
much; many a man has come to grief through that. 
Do you remember the Bishop’s exact words?” 

“I think so.” 

“Be everlastingly sure so.” 

“But if I am in good faith, I must be natural?” 

Janeway threw up his hands. “If you’re natural 
you’ll ruin us! Be cattish, cold, ominous—but not 
natural. While you talk, I’ll go into the office and 
sit with Judge Harrison.” 

“And remember,” he continued, always in rail¬ 
lery, but with a shrewd admixture of prudence, 
“ these are the vital words. I will repeat them: ‘ It 

is my duty, under certain conditions, to live with 
you as your wife.’ Come out strong with ‘condi¬ 
tions.’ Don’t, for the love of God, Louise, let too 
much of the sweetness of your mouth breathe into 
your words. And these are the conditions: ‘That 
you will not, in any way, interfere in the practice of 
my religion.’ Use those very words, ‘in any way’— 
they will irritate him.” 

“Henry!” 

“And don’t talk too long. If you do, I’ll break 
into the room myself.” He regarded her critically, 
as a master might study a prized pupil, his glance 
roving from feature to feature, as if calculating the 
danger each might contribute to the impending sit- 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


290 

uation. His eyes rested at length on her hat, a 
close-fitting affair, with just crown enough to add 
artfully to her height and frame the slender outline 
of her face. “ Darling!” he exclaimed, with a de¬ 
spairing gesture. “Why did you wear your pretti¬ 
est hat? ITAy didn’t you put on an old one? You 
should have dressed dowdily for the part —why didn’t 
we think of it? I’m always,” he said angrily, “for¬ 
getting something vitally important.” 

“But this hat is an old one,” cried Louise under 
her breath, in self-defense. “I brought it from 
Paris.” 

“I wish you’d brought one from Oshkosh!” 

“I might take it off.” 

“That would be worse. When I began practice,” 
he went on, “I never let a feminine client appear be¬ 
fore a jury till she had passed my inspection. If it 
were a widow suing a heartless corporation, she was 
drenched in grief and trappings of woe when she 
entered the court-room—no gay-widow business 
there; and even then I’d have to tell her that if her 
new fiance put his head so much as inside the court¬ 
room door, I’d drop the case. And if it were breach 
of promise—well! My client was sent straight from 
my office to a beauty parlor—the very first shot out 
of the box—and dolled up, every morning the 
trial was on, within an inch of her life. I’ve had 
some queer-looking dames come back from those 
places.” 

There was a slight knock. The door of the recep¬ 
tion-room opened. Bishop Marion stood before 


LOUISE AWAITS DURAND 291 

them. “Your husband,” he said quietly to Louise, 
“is here.” 

She rose with a start and looked from one to the 
other of the two men. “How shall I ever face him?” 
she murmured. 

“Don’t be frightened,” said the Bishop calmly. 
“He is in the office with Mr. Simms and the arbi¬ 
trators. They have signed. I’ve told him you are 
here and wish to speak to him a moment in the re¬ 
ception-room. You ask how you shall ever face him. 
You will face him, my child, by committing your 
cause to God, who will not fail you. And to the 
Mother of God, who was a woman, and knew suffer¬ 
ing even as you have known it. Neither God nor 
His blessed Mother will for one moment desert you 
or see you tried beyond your strength. That is how 
you will face him—with the right on your side, and 
leaving the issue in God’s hands. We two will retire 
now. Come in this way. I will ask Father Smyth 
to send your husband in.” 

Bishop Marion pointed the way to the reception- 
room. Janeway spoke. 

“Give me just a moment, Bishop,” he said. “I 
will follow you. The Bishop walked from the ante¬ 
chamber. Janeway took Louise’s hand. The two 
looked into each other’s eyes. Janeway drew her 
hand close and for the first time slipped his arm be¬ 
hind her. “Courage, my darling,” he said, ten¬ 
derly. “This is the last battle you will ever fight 
alone; the last moment, I hope, that will ever sep¬ 
arate us. And if it separate us forever—let it leave 
us, at least, the memory of a kiss !” 


292 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

He drew her to him. Her hands caught the lapels 
of his coat. Their lips met. Releasing herself, she 
whispered, still looking into his eyes: “You must 
go!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE INTERPELLATION 

She stood behind the centre table in the reception- 
room, fingering, with rather a pathetic effort to 
appear at ease, the leaves of an open pamphlet that 
lay near the call-bell on the table before her. Under 
the electric light of the old-fashioned chandelier 
above, her hat partly shading her face bent down, 
and with her gloves in one hand, Louise’s eyes saw 
nothing of what they looked at. She could not have 
named one word of the printed pages passing slowly 
under her sensitive fingers; she could not even call 
to mind the words she was soon to speak, so intently 
were her ears keyed to listening for the familiar 
stride of her husband’s feet; it was a sound that had 
too often brought her unhappiness to be at any time 
lightly awaited. When at last she heard it, she suf¬ 
fered acutely, nor would she look up even when she 
knew he had halted in the open doorway, for she was 
determined he should speak first. 

Durand entered the room, carrying his overcoat 
on his arm and with his hat in his hand; the hat he 
laid, with something of an air, on the table as he 
reached it, and faced Louise. And he was too pre¬ 
occupied to notice that the servant who conducted 
him to the reception-room had closed the door as 
he withdrew. 


293 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


294 

“I understand you want to see me?” he said, 
speaking as if to a stranger on business. 

The grating quality of his voice seemed not par¬ 
ticularly harsh in the words, but Louise so dreaded 
and detested all of its qualities that any words would 
have served as a challenge. 

She stiffened defensively, apprehension took wings, 
her mind cleared. “I have a question to ask, Rob¬ 
ert,” she said, looking up at him from across the 
table. 

“What’s your question?” he inquired coolly. 

“ Since I saw you last I have become a Catholic. 
Will you accept baptism, that you may live with 
me again?” 

“What!” His exclamation, weighted with con¬ 
tempt, sufficiently rejected the thought, but he 
added a definite, emphatic w T ord: “No!” 

“I won’t try to tell you how it happened—” she 
continued. 

“Don’t!” 

“—nor why. And what I have further to say 
will seem very strange to you.” 

He stood with one hand on the back of a chair 
that faced her. “A good many of your ideas have 
seemed strange to me,” he retorted harshly. 

“My religion,” she continued, not heeding his 
contemptuous tone, “imposes a duty on me; it has 
become necessary for me to offer, under certain con¬ 
ditions, to live with you again as your wife.” 

Of all the possibilities he had anticipated, none 
were within the slightest range of what he now heard. 


THE INTERPELLATION 


295 

“Well!” he exclaimed, sparring for breath. “This 
is a go!” He eyed her intently—as if, with her 
will or against it, to read her mind. But for the 
first time, looking into her face, he realized he could 
not do that which he had once done. Something 
new in her eyes, some impalpable barrier, seemed 
now to screen her thoughts. “What do you mean 
by ‘certain conditions’?” he finished by asking sus¬ 
piciously. 

She was ready. “That I be’ffree,” she answered 
quietly, “at all times to practise my religion without 
hindrance of any kind; and that you do not compel 
me to do anything against my conscience.” 

Durand threw out a little smoke-mask of his own. 
His eyes, dwelling instinctively on her erect figure, 
and noting the rounded cheeks, flushed under her 
lifted veil, had impressed her comeliness anew on his 
senses. She looked very pretty. Maymie, he had 
complained to Simms, though still sprightly, was al¬ 
ready close to fat; and when once he had told her 
she was eating too much, swore at him—being of a 
sensitive temperament—and slapped his face. 

“Look here, Louise,” he said, coming back patron¬ 
izingly to the present situation, “you’ve always 
suffered from enlargement of the conscience. That’s 
what used to be the matter with you.” 

She made an involuntary gesture of disdain. Un¬ 
happily, it served only to attract him. Durand, in 
his dealings both with men and women, loved about 
the same degree of active protest from them that a 
cat enjoys in the struggles of a mouse. 


I 


296 ‘ THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

“I suppose you know we’ve been divorced lately,” 
he continued. “ Catholics don’t believe in divorce, 
do they?” 

“ Certainly,” returned Louise collectedly, “not in 
divorce as you understand it.” 

“ After they’re divorced they can’t marry anybody 
else, can they?” 

She met each thrust evenly. “Not,” she an¬ 
swered, “if they have been validly married.” 

The suspicion of a grin crossed Durand’s face. 
“So you’d like your wicked husband back.” 

“It is my duty,” she repeated in a frosty mono¬ 
tone, though with rising uneasiness, “to offer to 
live again with you as your wife, under the condi¬ 
tions I have named. But only under those condi¬ 
tions.” 

It seemed as if her very aloofness added to her pres¬ 
ent danger. Durand stepped closer to the table in 
front of her. “Look here, Louise,” he repeated—and 
she almost shuddered at the thawing in his tone— 
“this is the first time I’ve talked business with you 
since we quarrelled that night in your room; maybe 
we’ve both learned something since. You got me 
hot; I guess I talked pretty rough. But I never 
really had anything against you. You were foolish 
to fuss about my little riots. A red-blooded man 
has got to be free to live his life. If you’d be a 
sport once in a while yourself you wouldn’t mind my 
fun. You’ve got the sparkle in you for a good time, 
if you’d warm up a little. That’s all that ever made 
trouble between us—you’re too frosty. You could 



THE INTERPELLATION 297 

outdance and outsing, and, for that matter, out¬ 
drink any chicken in the coop—if you’d do it.” 

All her latent hatred of the man before her glowed 
at his words. Indeed, she had never detested him 
so much, because fear was not now uppermost as it 
had long been in her submerged years. So intense 
was her feeling that restraint became difficult. If 
she controlled herself it was only by thinking of 
another man, one waiting, and for whom she was 
making her desperate fight for liberty. She looked 
at Durand steadily. “ Never expect me to dance 
as you want drunken women to dance. Never ex¬ 
pect me to sing, half drunk, the songs your friends 
sing; never expect me to drink as they drink. I 
hate it!” She threw her aversion into her tones. 
Durand, looking at her with increasing interest, 
laughed. This sort of a spirit was new in Louise. 

“Well,” he asked lazily, “you could drink with 
me once in a while all by your lonesome, couldn’t 
you, kitten?” He laughed again. “Remember the 
night you wouldn’t drink whiskey straight, and I 
put the gin in it when you asked for water? You 
had the Follies put to sleep that night!” 

Her face flushed painfully. She reddened to her 
neck, and for an instant stared past him, in humilia¬ 
tion. Then she fixed her eyes steadily on his. “I 
didn’t know, that night,” she said quietly, “what 
whiskey was.” 

“That wasn’t my fault. I was full of it when I 
married you.” 

“I didn’t know that.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


298 

“Well,” he persisted, “didn’t I always do every¬ 
thing I could for you? Did I ever refuse you 
money?” 

“Yes.” 

“Not often,” he exclaimed, not quite pleased. 
“Maybe sometimes when you wanted to give it 
away. Louise, if you’d brace up—just be a good 
pal once in a while and meet my friends like friends, 
you and I could waddle along like two ducks. This 
is a gay old world; but if you want to be happy, 
you’ve got to give it a chance to make you happy.” 

She instinctively drew back her head. “I can’t 
dance through life with friends without homes, 
women without names, men without decency. I 
tried to make a home for you; I loved it—you loved 
every place else. I loved children—you abominated 
them.” 

“We want to live while we live, don’t we? Not 
mould in a nursery. Come! Meet me half-way. 
I’ll be reasonable; you’ve been badly advised. That 
man Jane way, not content with playing traitor to 
me and secretly fanning my trouble with my men, 
has stung me for a big settlement on you in this 
divorce suit—cripples me, with the worst time ahead 
in the steel business since 1893.” 

She almost started with the fear of what Janeway’s 
persistence in the settlement might now do. 

“Together,” he went on, speaking fast now, “we 
can make a go of the thing, much better than if we 
split our resources. You’re a good business woman 
—as Gertrude never gets tired of reminding me. 


THE INTERPELLATION 


2 99 

I’m not stuck on marrying Montgomery; it’s she 
that’s keen for that. What do you want in a recon¬ 
ciliation?” 

It was the cruelest of all the moments. She felt 
the ground slipping from under her feet. While he 
spoke, she was praying desperately for help to know 
what to say. All she could think of she mechanically 
uttered. “I will do my duty toward you as a wife. 
But”—and then came the inspiration she had asked 
for—“do not expect me ever again to merge my 
means with yours. As long as we live, my estate 
must always be separate. Nor will I ever again live 
with you such a life as you have lived, Robert.” 

She, who knew its lines so well, could perceive in 
his face the blow her decision to retain control of her 
estate had been. A sneering changed his expression. 
“There you go again,” he said with a snap. “More 
conscience—you’ve always had that after the first 
cocktail.” 

“I can’t be the chum of the companions who came 
between us before,” she said composedly, though 
both knew they were not talking of the real blow to 
his pretensions. 

“Look here, Louise,” he began, with his favorite 
opening; but there was a harder note in his voice, 
“this thing looks a little queer to me. I’ll ask you 
a question: Do you come to me of your own free 
will?” 

She paused slightly. “Yes,” she said at length. 

“No one told you to, eh ? Why don’t you answer ? 
Are Christians supposed to tell the truth?” 




3 °° 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


“Yes.” 

“And to answer questions?” 

“If one has the right to ask them.” 

“Am I your husband, or not?” 

“I suppose you are, in one sense.” 

“Then if a husband has the right to ask the truth 
of his wife”—he was enjoying his high role—“I ask 
you, who told you to come to me in this way?” 

She welcomed the question. “Bishop Marion,” 
she answered, quite unafraid. 

He flew into a rage. “He thinks if I take you 
back, he’ll get all my money some day, eh?” 

“Bishop Marion told me it was my duty to ask 
you what I have asked to-night.” 

“So that’s the wrinkle ! This meddlesome Bishop 
tries to run you back on me!” 

“Do you wish time, Robert, to think over what I 
have asked you?” 

He raised his head defiantly. “No! Not on your 
life!” 

“Then,” she exclaimed swiftly, “we have debated 
enough. You do not wish to accept my proposal.” 

“And have this rascally Bishop running to my 
house to see you?” She was restfully silent. “And 
have his sneaking priests,” stormed Durand, “spy¬ 
ing around among my men?” 

She turned her face half away. “Don’t conjure 
up foolish things,” she said, lifting her shoulders. 

“See here,” flamed Durand—a new and angry 
thought crossed his mind—“has Henry Janeway had 
a hand in this scheme?” 


THE INTERPELLATION 


3 ox 

“What do you mean?” she asked, quite sure now 
of her ground. 

“Did he help put you up to this?” demanded 
Durand. 

“Mr. Janeway advised me strongly not to do 
what I have just done.” 

“Of course not,” retorted Durand. “A bird to 
pluck in hand is worth a dozen in the bush. Jane¬ 
way wants his fifty-per-cent fee right now out of the 
money you’re getting from me !” 

Her attitude, her involuntary shrinking with cold 
impatience, expressed her indifference to his temper 
and threats. She looked at him without an effort. 
“What have I to do with all this?” she asked coldly. 
“You will not take me under the conditions I 
have named.” 

“Conditions be damned! Will you live with me 
and play the dutiful chicken as you never would play 
it before?” 

“No!” 

“No!” 

Turning, with a quick breath, from his presence, 
Louise waited for nothing more. As if to escape the 
air, she hastened to the door of the antechamber 
from which she had come. With her hand on the 
knob, and with the door ajar, she turned toward 
him for the last time. “Good night!” she mur¬ 
mured swiftly and, passing out, closed the door be¬ 
hind her. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE LIPS ARE THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP, BUT 
THE VOICE IS THE VOICE OF ST. PAUL 

Confused by the surprising proposal of his wife, un¬ 
certain as to his wisdom in bluntly rejecting it, and 
more than ever under the sway of his violent tem¬ 
per, Durand, upset by the abrupt ending of the in¬ 
terview and by the unexplained light that shone in 
Louise’s eyes as she left him, caught up his hat and 
started for the hall door. He flung it rudely open, 
only to find himself confronted by Janeway. 

It was an awkward encounter. Janeway was 
never in worse mood. The strain of his suspense 
showed in his flushed face, and he spoke the hardest 
of greetings. “Good evening, Durand.” 

With the words he continued to advance, and in 
effect backed Durand into the room. Stepping 
aside to make way for the intrusion, Durand an¬ 
swered sharply: “You can have the room to your¬ 
self!” 

He tried to pass out. Janeway obstructed him. 
“It’s large enough for two,” he said. 

The words and manner of the lawyer were too 
charged with aggressiveness to mistake. “What’s 
your game?” demanded Durand in a loud voice. 

“Mrs. Durand,” said Janeway, and he seemed to 
regain in part his habitual restraint, “has had some 

questions to put to you to-night-” 

302 



THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP 


303 

“Questions,” retorted Durand, “that mean an¬ 
other capitalistic fee for her high-minded legal ad¬ 
viser !” 

“It won’t make any difference to me in fees 
whether you do what she asked or not. But before 
I see her, I want to know what answer you gave her. 
Will you tell me?” 

“No.” 

The violent refusal did not stir Janeway. As the 
storm gathered, he gained better control of himself. 
“There are good reasons, Durand,” he continued 
carefully, “for my asking you this before I see her.” 

“No reasons that are of the slightest consequence 
to me,” blustered Durand. 

“One of them is of consequence to you,” persisted 
Janeway, still confronting the angry steel master. 
“If you attempt to take that woman back and sink 
her into the licentious hell you train in, I’ll kill you. 
Make no mistake, Durand, for I mean it.” 

So intense was the instant that neither of the two 
men noticed a third person in the hall behind them. 

“Curse your impudence!” cried Durand. “It’s 
time for you and me to adjust our differences! ” 

Bishop Marion, on the threshold of the open door, 
halted, amazed. “Mr. Janeway!” he exclaimed, in 
stinging reproach, “have you completely forgotten 
yourself? What possible controversy can you have 
with this man now ? Surely you will withdraw your 
words.” 

“I meant exactly what I said,” declared Janeway, 
unmoved. “He’s warned.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3°4 

“Are you two,” demanded the Bishop, “to stand 
here in my presence with murder in your hearts ? ” 

“My words were conditional.” Janeway made a 
characteristically wrathful gesture as he spoke. 
“Let him be guided,” he added, not lowering his tone 
on the final words. 

“No more words, I beg of you—nor threats,” in¬ 
terposed Bishop Marion. 

“Don’t imagine your threats or withdrawals are 
of any interest to me. And I’ll thank you, Mr. 
Bishop, to give less attention in the future to my 
personal concerns.” 

Bishop Marion regarded Durand steadily. “I 
hope I shall have need in future to give very much 
less. Do I hear correctly that you have just declined 
to receive back your wife?” 

“You do!” Durand pushed the declaration al¬ 
most to a shout. 

If Janeway started, it was imperceptibly; he stood 
a transfixed listener to the rapid exchanges. 

“Then my interest in your domestic affairs,” re¬ 
turned Bishop Marion, “ceases from this instant 
forever.” 

“And if you’ve no further threats to offer,” added 
Durand, looking savagely at Janeway, “I’ll bid you 
both good evening.” 

Janeway suppressed a laugh. “ Good evening, Mr. 
Durand,” he said, making way as Durand strode 
from the room; then he turned keenly on the Bishop. 
“He has refused?” 

“He has.” 


THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP 


305 


“Then where do we stand?” 

The Bishop regarded him gravely. “We have 
crossed a great gulf.” 

“Where is Mrs. Durand?” 

“With mv sister and Miss Durand. I will find 
her and bring her in.” And, speaking, Bishop 
Marion passed at once into the anteroom. 

Stalking to the Bishop’s office for Simms and Judge 
Harrison, Durand ran into Simms, looking for him. 
Simms, much excited, took him by the arm. “Stay 
there half a minute in the office with Harrison, Bob,” 
he whispered hurriedly. “I’ve uncovered some¬ 
thing. I must move quick.” 

“What do you mean?” demanded Durand, with 
an epithet of disgust. 

“Never mind what I mean. Do as I tell you !” 

“What’s up?” 

Simms was not tractable. “You’ll know soon 
enough, if I don’t get action. Do as I tell you.” 
He pushed Durand into the office and hastened 
toward the reception-room. In it he encountered 
Janeway. 

“Look here!” exclaimed Simms. “What’s this 
story I hear from Harrison about you and Louise 
Durand?” 

“What do you hear?” asked Janeway. 

“Why, that you’re going to marry her! Man, 
isn’t there bad blood enough already between you 
and Bob Durand?” 

“There never was less.” 

“She’s a Catholic. She won’t marry you.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3°6 

“How do you know?” 

“Know? Why, damn it, man, I’m a Catholic 
myself.” 

“You a Catholic?” Contempt could convey 
nothing more than the even words carried. “Well” 
—Janeway paused in his studied scorn—“some¬ 
body’s got to be persecuted; I suppose it might as 
well be the Catholics as anybody else.” 

“That’s all right,” flared Simms, “but I’ll tell you 
there’s a few things you can put over a jury that 
you can’t put over the outfit that runs this house.” 

“I haven’t taken a degree yet in the Canon Law 
of the Church,” remarked Janeway composedly. 
“But I think I can qualify pretty soon.” 

“Bob Durand,” declared Simms, “will fight to the 
death your marrying Louise.” 

Janeway only continued to bait the exasperated 
attorney. “You wouldn’t help him make trouble 
for me, would you, Simms?” 

Simms puffed out. “I’m his lawyer, Henry,” he 
said warningly. “ I’ll stand by him, remember that.” 

“Do,” counselled Janeway, as Simms again started 
into the hall. “I’ve beaten you both before. I may 
do it again.” 

It was only a moment before Louise stood in the 
anteroom door with Bishop Marion. Janeway 
clasped her hands. They were icy. 

“Was that Simms here with you just now ? ” asked 
Louise anxiously. “What was he saying?” 

Janeway laughed with the spirit of a boy. “He 
said Durand would never let you marry me.” 


THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP 


3°7 


“What did you say?” 

“That I shouldn’t ask his permission.” He turned 
to the Bishop. “Now we are here with you to¬ 
gether, tell us: Where do we stand?” 

Bishop Marion, cognizant of the excitement of the 
two before him, yet lost nothing of his seriousness. 
“Mr. Janeway,” he said, “the problem you laid be¬ 
fore me with this child is a very old one—and as long 
as humanity endures and men and women turn to 
the Church of God, that problem will call for merci¬ 
ful answer. St. Paul”—he spoke now to Louise— 
“found himself confronted by cases precisely like 
yours. And for those difficult cases he laid down a 
great law—the Magna Charta in favor of the Chris¬ 
tian faith—the law that I apply to you to-night. It 
is this: 

“Where one party to a pagan marriage becomes a 
Christian, she is bound by natural justice to live 
with her pagan partner as his wife, provided that 
partner permits the untrammelled practice of her 
religion, and does not compel her or tempt her to 
lead a sinful life. But St. Paul required that on 
these points the Christian spouse, before breaking 
the bond between them, should interpellate her hus¬ 
band. This you have done.” 

“If that’s St. Paul’s law, it’s good law and good 
common sense,” interposed Janeway with empha¬ 
sis. 

“Your husband,” continued the Bishop, address¬ 
ing Louise, “has refused the assurance you had the 
right to demand. I say to you, therefore, Louise, 



THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3°8 

that in the sight of the Catholic Church you are no 
longer bound in your marriage to Robert Durand.” 

“Then,” exclaimed Janeway tensely, “that dread 
barrier falls ! Louise ! I renew my suit! ” 

Gertrude hastened into the room from the ante¬ 
chamber, almost dragging Judge Harrison after her. 
The Judge looked as close to bewildered as he could 
ever be caught, and, glancing uncertainly from one 
to another of the three in the room, clung to the 
dead cigar in his fingers; it seemed, in the confusing 
circumstances, as if it might prove his best friend. 
Gertrude was at no loss for greetings. “Oh, this is 
where you are!” she exclaimed. Louise ran to her. 
“Gertrude!” she cried in a low voice, “I’m free!” 

Harrison walked toward Janeway and the Bishop, 
and looked from one to the other. “If I’ve no busi¬ 
ness here,” he suggested calmly, “I shall hope some¬ 
body will tell me so.” 

“But you have!” exclaimed Janeway. “I want 
you here. Louise is free !” 

Harrison regarded the men before him benevo¬ 
lently. 

“Well,” he observed, in leisurely fashion, “I shan’t 
ask just now how it’s been done; I hope to hear 
some time in the future. I had it fixed in my own 
mind that Janeway would come to grief this time,” 
he said to the Bishop. “I couldn’t see any other 
way out. But I never let on to Simms. I told him 
a few minutes ago I didn’t know the rules of this par¬ 
ticular game; but whatever they were, I considered 
it a bet to play Janeway to win.” 


THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP 


309 

“No, no !” interrupted Janeway hastily. “Not 
Janeway to win. But St. Paul to hand down a great 
law—and a just judge to administer it,” he said, lay¬ 
ing a hand on the sleeve of the Bishop. “Now,” he 
added, turning to Gertrude, “set our wedding-day!” 

Gertrude took the remark seriously. “Oh, let it 
be set quick ! Give no chance for hatred or revenge 
to defeat your happiness!” 

Louise spoke to Bishop Marion, as if again to hear 
that the gyves had fallen from her wrists. “And my 
marriage bond to my former husband—is it now 
absolutely broken?” she asked, looking for confirma¬ 
tion to her protector. 

The Bishop alone had remained calm. He turned 
kindly eyes on his eager questioner. “I have said 
you are free,” he replied slowly. “But to say, at 
this moment, that your marriage bond to your for¬ 
mer husband is absolutely broken would be to say 
too much.” 

Janeway started. He looked, in effect, apoplectic. 
“What!” he burst out. “After all this sacrifice, all 
this humiliation—her marriage bond is not absolutely 
broken! What, in God’s name, Bishop Marion, do 
you mean?” 

“I mean,” answered the Bishop, choosing his 
words, “there is but one way—only one—completely 
to sever that bond.” 

A question rose like a flash to Janeway’s lips. 
“What’s that way?” 

“Your marriage bond to Robert Durand”— 
Bishop Marion addressed Louise—“becomes forever 




THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3 IQ 

severed the moment you become the wife of another 
man.” 

Janeway whirled toward her. “Then, Louise!” 
he exclaimed, “for the love of heaven, become my 
wife now, here, this minute!” 

Louise looked from Gertrude to Janeway, and 
back at Bishop Marion, to grasp the meaning of his 
astonishing words. 

The Bishop refused to become excited. “That 
privilege, my child,” he added, looking at Louise, “is 
yours, if you wish it. You are absolutely free to 
act.” 

The sound of voices, raised in argument, floated 
in from the hall. “Mr. Simms,” said Gertrude, 
alarmed, “was in the office when I called Uncle Sid¬ 
ney out, talking awfully loud to a white-haired priest 
—about who could get married and who couldn’t.” 

Bishop Marion smiled. “It must be dear old 
Father Breton—who is as deaf as a post.” 

Janeway caught Louise’s hands. “Can you ask 
more than what Bishop Marion tells you?” he said 
earnestly. “We can protect ourselves now from 
every peril of the revengeful duplicity of another. 
She looked at him bewildered. Louise!” he plead¬ 
ed. “God of Heaven, don’t you understand?” 

His words shook her from her thoughts. “Henry,” 
she cried, low and affectionately, “I understand. 
But I can’t be married this minute! I’ve made no 
preparations, no, no—nothing of any kind.” She 
turned in confusion to Gertrude. “I didn’t expect 
to get married to-night!” 



THE LIPS OF THE BISHOP 


3il 

Janeway saw her dismay. He held her hands be¬ 
fore him and spoke reassuringly. “Louise! I ask 
it only for our happiness. Don’t you wish to make 
that safe?” 

She looked at him with the simplest faith. “I 
wish to reward all your patience,” she said, “to re¬ 
pay all your kindness. Above all, I do want—if 
you really wish it—to make you happy, if I can.” 
She hesitated. “But I can't get married without 
any notice, Henry!” 

Janeway drew her a little apart. “Dearest, I un¬ 
derstand perfectly your delicacy of feeling. Go 
home with Gertrude; but be married now. Receive 
me as your husband in your own good time—when 
you like.” 

She opened her eyes wide. “Oh, but I shouldn’t 
like that at all!” she said. “I want you to be my 
husband when I marry you. But I haven’t had one 
minute’s notice!” 

The voice of Simms, struggling with Father Bre¬ 
ton, strengthened Janeway’s last appeal. “They are 
at our heels, Louise ! I implore you, consent!” 

She turned to the Bishop. “What must we do, 
Bishop Marion, to get married now?” 

“Are you sure you wish it—now?” he asked. 

“Henry says so,” faltered Louise. “Yes, I’m sure 
—if Henry is!” And she joined uneasily in the 
laughter started by her words. 

“Then to the chapel,” said Bishop Marion. 
“Father Smyth is there. You, Judge Harrison, and 
you, Miss Durand, as witnesses.” 


312 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

Judge Harrison looked nonplussed. He laid down 
his cigar and addressed himself gravely to Gertrude 
and Louise. “You will have to stand by me,” 
he said aside. “Elizabeth is missing all this; when 
she hears it, she’ll never believe I was no more than 
an innocent bystander. I look to you to protect 
me, girls.” 

Bishop Marion threw open the chapel doors. 


CHAPTER XXV 


IN THE LAST HOUR 

“You’re coming in with us, Bishop?” Janeway 
turned with the question to Bishop Marion, who 
stood in the reception-room, waiting to close the 
doors behind the wedding party as it passed into 
the chapel. 

The Bishop thought not. “My guests are not all 
gone yet. It may be better that I remain here a 
few moments.” Closing the door of the chapel, he 
crossed the room and opened the door into the hall, 
where Durand’s voice was plainly to be heard be¬ 
rating Simms. 

“I don’t believe they’re here at all,” he was say¬ 
ing testily. “You’ve made a fine mess ! First you 
tell me he can’t marry her; then you tell me he’ll 
marry her to-night! I’ll block that if I have to eat 
my words every day for ten years. You’re a bun¬ 
gler, Simms.” 

“I?” exclaimed Simms. “Don’t talk to me, Du¬ 
rand. You’ve queered everything I’ve done from 
the start to keep you out of the hole!” 

Bishop Marion walked forward to the bay win¬ 
dow, raised the front shade and looked out into the 
street. 

“Janeway’s beaten you at every turn,” retorted 

313 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3 I 4 

Durand, with bitterness, as the two men came down 
the hall. “Now he’s got half my surplus and my 
wife besides. You’re a great big windbag, Simms.” 

“Look here! While you’re ranting, you’re get¬ 
ting beaten worse and worse. I tell you they’re here 
in this house, and if you don’t see her and fix it up 
with her, you’re beat forever!” With Durand sul¬ 
lenly following, Simms walked brusquely into the 
reception-room and pounded the call-bell on the 
table furiously. “Where are the infernal servants 
here?” 

•• « 

Bishop Marion spoke from the window, where he 
had stood until now unnoticed. “Whom,” he asked 
calmly, “do you wish to see, Mr. Simms?” 

Simms whirled on him; known to the belligerent 
lawyer only as a man of peace, the Bishop seemed a 
safe outlet for his smarting ill-temper. “We want 
to see you,” he announced stridently. “Robert 
Durand wants to see his wife at once. Your servant 
started off to find her and never came back.” 

The Bishop looked undisturbed at Durand. “Mr. 
Durand,” he said, in the same unmoved tone, “has 
seen his wife to-night.” 

Durand cut off anything Simms could say. “I 
knew nothing then about this last conspiracy you’re 
a party to—to make her Janeway’s wife! This is 
your trick, is it?” demanded Durand furiously, fac¬ 
ing the Bishop. “Posing with your long fingers and 
oily tongue as an apostle of matrimonial purity, and 
attempting to marry a divorced woman to a crooked 
lawyer!” 



IN THE LAST HOUR 


3*5 

Simms felt that he, too, should register, in the in¬ 
terest of high thinking and right living, his emphatic 
protest. “It’s an outrage, Bishop Marion!” he 
thundered. “A scandal to religion for a man hold¬ 
ing an—er—honored office, a position of—er—er— 
hierarchical trust—to lend himself to such a damna¬ 
ble proceeding! I couldn’t believe my ears when I 
heard it! You make me ashamed of the Church I 
was baptized in ! ” 

The Bishop did not seem deeply stirred. He 
looked at one and the other of the two men who 
faced him, as each spoke. But though his demeanor 
was restrained, the expression of his eyes, as Simms 
continued to hurl condemnation at him, changed. 

“And have you the audacity, Simms,” he said de¬ 
liberately, “to stand before me and talk of scandal 
to religion, in the face of the life you live and the 
example you set in this community? You,” re¬ 
peated the Bishop, with gathering indignation, 
“born and reared in the Catholic faith, yet whose 
face is never seen inside a Catholic church! You, 
public profligate and reprobate that you are—a re¬ 
proach to your baptism—have you the effrontery to 
accuse me of giving scandal? I say to you, Simms” 
—the voice of the gray-haired prelate shook with the 
castigation. He pointed his finger at the astounded 
attorney. “I say to you, this blinded pagan at your 
side”—the finger fixed on Durand—“sunken in vice 
as he is, is less guilty, in the eyes of God, than you! 
He has never fallen, as you have, from decency and 
restraint! Wretched man! Scandal of your faith ! 





THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


316 

When Sodom and Gomorrah are weighed—how— 
God help you—shall you be judged ? 

“And you, Durand! This is the creature you 
have enlisted to help you persecute an unoffending 
woman! How are you to be named when men 
speak of men?” 

Durand was able to recover himself first. “You’re 
a hypocrite!” he shouted. “You’ve exploited my 
domestic troubles to line your own pockets. I tell 
you, my wife offered to-night to come back and live 
with me. I want no abuse at your hands, no threats 
from you; I’ll hold you personally responsible for de¬ 
taining her!” 

“Then I say to you here and now, Durand,” and 
the Bishop, with flashing eyes, laid his words like 
whip-lashes on the husband’s shoulders, “that your 
pagan marriage, with its iniquities you have wal¬ 
lowed in, and into which you tried to drag your in¬ 
nocent wife, is dissolved! I say to you that before 
the State and before God you have no wife! I in¬ 
voke to-night for Louise Durand what your own in¬ 
tolerable conduct has given her— the pauline priv¬ 
ilege ! And the last remnant of any bond binding 
her to you breaks this night when she becomes the 
true wife of Henry Janeway!” 

“And I say to you !” cried Durand, his confidence 
shaken but his effrontery unabated, “in the presence 
of this witness, that I’ll make the promises you and 
she require. I’ll take my wife back and leave her 
free and untrammelled in the practice of her religion. 
And I demand her at your hands!” 


IN THE LAST HOUR 


317 

The folding doors of the chapel were thrown open 
by Father Smyth. Louise walked out at Janeway’s 
side. The glow suffusing her face told the Bishop 
all he needed to know. “Your professions are too 
late,” he said sternly to Durand. “Neither God nor 
man gives you claim on this woman now; she is 
Henry Janeway’s wife.” 

“It’s conspiracy!” blustered Simms. “Plain con¬ 
spiracy ! We’ll see what the courts have to say 
about this! Come, Mr. Durand.” The two were 
starting from the room when Janeway spoke. ‘‘ Hold 
on, Simms. You said you had a copy of that settle¬ 
ment document with you. Give it to me.” 

Simms drew the agreement from his pocket. Du¬ 
rand interposed sharply. “Do nothing of the kind, 
Simms. Give that paper to me!” 

Between the two fires Simms hesitated. He 
looked from one to the other of the men, afraid of 
offending Durand, but knowing they could not bluff 
Janeway. He turned on the steel master placatingly. 
“Mr. Durand, this is in accordance with the court 
record,” he said, trying to explain. “It merely 
itemizes the sums and securities stipulated in the 
settlement. It would do no good to withhold it. 
The court has entered the decree.” 

“Curse the decree!” exclaimed Durand, losing 
what little temper he had left. “I’ll have it an¬ 
nulled. This is fraud. I’ll claim my wife! ” Jane¬ 
way only laughed gently. “Give me that paper!” 
persisted Durand in wrath. 

“Bob, I tell you it’s no possible use,” objected 


318 THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 

Simms tartly. “The court will enforce it, any¬ 
way !” 

“Simms,” said Janeway, holding out his hand, 
with a tone of finality, “ deliver that paper.” Simms 
reluctantly handed it to him. Janeway turned to 
his wife. “Louise,” he said, “this is yours.” She 
took the agreement, looking at him inquiringly. 
“When I exacted it,” he went on, “I believed, or 
feared, you might face the world without an income, 
without the training to earn a living, without a pro¬ 
tector to do it for you; my hopes, not my fears, have 
been realized. It is now my privilege to lay my 
earnings in your hands for your comfort and protec¬ 
tion. I am your income.” He pointed to the paper 
in her hand. “This shield from the hardships of the 
world, rightfully yours, is no longer a necessity. 
What will you do with it?” 

She looked at her husband. “It was your solici¬ 
tude, Henry, that provided this.” She held the 
paper in her open hand. “I never insisted on it,” 
she added. 

“Simple justice entitled you to it,” said Janeway. 
“It restores to you what is left of your father’s 
estate. And exacts, in addition, a substantial sum 
for the humiliations and injustices you have suffered. 
But as money you no longer need it. What will you 
now do with it?” 

Without hesitation she put the paper in her hus¬ 
band’s hand. “You,” she replied, “will know best 
what to do with it.” 


IN THE LAST HOUR 


3 T 9 

Janeway, pausing as he looked at the paper, re¬ 
garded her with seriousness. “Do you give me this, 
Louise,” he asked, “to do with exactly as I please?” 

“To do with exactly as you please, Henry.” 

“Then I will say to Mr. Simms and Mr. Durand,” 
continued Janeway, “and to this little world of Fond 
du Lac, that my wife will not participate in the sur¬ 
plus of the twelve-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week 
Durand Corporation. I hope personally to provide 
for the necessities, and, if possible, the luxuries of 
Mrs. Henry Janeway. The property representing in 
this document your father’s estate is properly re¬ 
stored to you. As to the added securities pledged 
herein by Robert Durand, they would make, it 
seems plain to me, a fitting foundation for a chil¬ 
dren’s hospital. Persuade, if you can, Bishop 
Marion and Judge Harrison to act as your trustees 
in such an undertaking, Louise. If they can be 
made to accept, the community will know that your 
trust is to be faithfully carried out. And I feel sure 
now that Bishop Marion will excuse Mr. Simms and 
Mr. Durand from further participation in the hap¬ 
piness of this evening.” 

Without attempting further retort, Durand turned 
brusquely on his heel, and, followed by Simms— 
Janeway still eying them—left the room and the 
house. 

Bishop Marion took one of Louise’s and one of 
Janeway’s hands. “And our little ‘conspiracy,’ ” he 
said, “is dissolved.” 


THE MARRIAGE VERDICT 


3 2 ° 

“No,” responded Janeway, clasping the Bishop’s 
hand in both his own, and unleashing for the mo¬ 
ment the intensity of his feelings. “It’s not dis¬ 
solved yet; I hope it never will be dissolved. I hope 
I may always retain the loyal friendship that has 
brought me my wife”—he looked at her—“and the 
happiness that is ours now. You have guided us 
patiently through seas uncharted to me, into a 
haven of safety. You have established a new 
home-” 

Bishop Marion’s self-consciousness would stand no 
more. “You are too grateful,” he protested, “for 
the little I have done.” He looked at Louise. “It 
was only your right, my dear child, that I have given 
you; and what I have done for you, I would have 
done—indeed, have done—for the simplest of my 
flock. I rejoice with you both, honestly, in your 
new-found happiness. And, I repeat, our ‘con¬ 
spiracy’-” 

“Do not repeat, Bishop,” interrupted Janeway, 
“that our ‘conspiracy,’ as Mr. Durand terms it, is 
dissolved. My best friend”—he indicated Judge 
Harrison, who, with an unlighted cigar between his 
fingers, tried to appear somewhat at ease—“is here 
witness that I have entered into a new and solemn 
engagement, with the oldest living member of the 
natural-contract family—matrimony. I am going to 
try to make one woman happy, trusting to find in 
her happiness my own. It is you”—he addressed 
Bishop Marion—“who have surrendered her into my 





IN THE LAST HOUR 321 

keeping—to you I must in some measure be respon¬ 
sible. Give us, at least, your blessing, that in what 
I undertake I may not fail!” 


THE END 













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